In the days of old when ships were made of wood and men (and cannonballs) were made of iron, every sailing ship needed cannons for protection. Cannons of the times required round iron cannonballs. Since he who could fire first had a distinct advantage, it was indeed advantageous to store the cannonballs as near to the cannons as possible in such a manner that they could be of instant use when needed, yet not otherwise roll about the gun deck.

The solution employed was to stack them in a four level deep square based pyramid next to the cannons. The bottom layer contained sixteen, the third held nine, the second layer was composed of just four, and it was topped off with a single cannonball. Since cannonballs are round, how do you keep them in a nice pyramidal stack of thirty without them rolling all over the place? Well a small brass plate called a "brass monkey" was devised with sixteen rounded indentations for the cannonballs in the bottom layer. Brass was used so that the cannonballs would not rust solidly to the base, which would be the case if iron was used.

When the temperature falls, brass contracts more quickly than iron. When it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass monkeys would become smaller than the iron cannonballs they were holding. If the temperature became cold enough, the indentations would become incapable of retaining the cannonballs in the bottom layer, which would be forced out by the weight of those above and the entire contents of the pyramids would spill all over the deck. Thus it was quite literally, "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey".

It's a great story but there's no known evidence that monkey was used as a term for such a base. The earliest citing of the phrase "cold enough to freeze the tail off a brass monkey" is to be found in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1929.

• The recipe was devised by a Harvard student.
• It was named because it's Harvard’s official color.
• The recipe was created in Harwood’s Pub in England. A Russian emigrant to Boston, opened a pub of the same name and began to serve the traditional dish. It sounded more as though he was saying "Harvard" instead of "Harwood’s" because of his Russian accent.

Language experts agree that nick in this case signifies a small cut or notch. The phrases "in the nick" or "in the very nick" began to be used around the 1580's to denote a critical moment or instant when an event occurs. Hence a nick was a narrow and precise indicator, such that if something was "in the nick", it was just where it should be. Users of these expressions soon began to add "of time" to them, and this usage has continued into the present. However for at least the last fifty to sixty years, the phrases actually have been used to denote something that has occurred or will occur at the last possible moment or just in time.