There are a bunch of old cocktails with Boston in their name — Boston Cooler, Boston Sour, Boston Special — but, as I mentioned in a previous post about this matter, I have no intel on what makes a cocktail a Boston cocktail. I mean, it’s weird; there are other drinks named after cities, most notably the Manhattan, but also the Frisco, the Saratoga and the Toronto. These are singular cocktails, whereas Boston cocktails are numerous and without apparent rhyme or reason.
In a comment on that previous post, a reader named Mike said, “The ‘Boston’ refers to the use of rum and limes. Boston had a huge trade in molasses and rum with the Caribbean back in the day.” Sure, I know about the historic molasses/rum industry (largely concentrated in Medford), but I don’t see how rum and limes connote a Boston cocktail. I mean, a) tons of cocktails use rum and limes, and b) many Boston-named cocktails call for neither.
When it comes to questions about rum drinks, my go-to source is Old Mr. Medford (aka Brother Cleve), so I passed Mike’s comment by him. He scoured his old cocktail books and came up with a list of Boston-named cocktails, which I have included on the Boston cocktails – old page. This list confirms that drinks named after ol’ Beantown are all over the map.
“There are no stories attached to these recipes,” says Cleve. “The Sour and Sidecar are from a very early Old Mr. Boston book [1946], but Boothby’s [World Drinks And How To Mix Them (1934)] predates that. The Boston Cooler is listed in a number of books. I assume these were served at some popular restaurant or hotel here. Possibly S.S. Pierce had something to do with this?”
There’s a big debate happening tonight. People all over Boston are asking themselves, ‘Do I go to the grand opening of Drink, or wait a few days/weeks until the hoopla dies down?’
Oh, there’s the vice-presidential debate, too. Which leads to yet another debate: ‘Do I stay home and watch what might be the most memorable 90 minutes of the 2008 presidential race, or go out and avoid a potentially cringe-worthy evening in front of the TV?’
These are tough choices.
If you decide to go out and watch the debate, there is a debate-watching party tonight at the Hong Kong in Harvard Square. It is sponsored by the group Drinking Liberally, whose motto is “promoting democracy one pint at a time.”
While you’re wrestling with the weighty matters of the presidential campaign, the financial crisis and whether it’s too soon to check out Boston’s newest bar, take a few minutes and have a laugh at this, um, instructional video (Jeffrey Morgenthaler posted this on his blog well over a year ago, but I saw it just yesterday). The bartender in it claims that she is making a Mint Julep. Her perkiness, confidence and utter lack of a clue are positively Palinesque.
Is anyone else shedding tears of joy right now? Mud Puddle Books, which recently published reproductions of five out-of-print cocktail books from the late 1800s and early 1900s, has plans to publish David Embury’s Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, “one of the most literate and enjoyable books written about cocktails,” notes “A Cocktail Book Renaissance, Too,” in this week’s New York Times. Embury’s book has been known to pop up on eBay now and again, attracting bids in the hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. It is spoken of with reverence by anyone who takes the craft of bartending seriously. I’ve never even seen a copy. But soon, it seems, I will be able to buy one at a reasonable price.
Mud Puddle’s first five re-prints (with introductions by modern experts such as Ted Haigh, Robert Hess and David Wondrich) are also worth a look. They are C. F. Lawlor’s The Mixicologist; Barflies and Cocktails, written in the 1920s by Harry McElhone of the famous Harry’s New York Bar in Paris; Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual and Guide for Hotels and Restaurants; O. H. Byron’s The Modern Bartender’s Guide; and Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks, a British book published by Farrow & Jackson to promote its barware.
During last month’s drinking spree … oops, I mean research expedition … in San Francisco, I appropriately came across some excellent writing about hangovers. A recent New Yorker article, A few too many: Is there any hope for the hungover?, goes deep into the world of hangover remedies. The two major types are discussed: folk (Russians swear by pickle juice and vodka) and pharmaceutical (preventive pills like RU-21 — get it?).
The body of research on hangover cures is thin, notes the writer, Joan Acocella. That’s basically because no upstanding research institution is willing to do what is required to find a treatment for the effects of overconsumption: bankroll a massive study involving a large population of drunken (read: difficult to control) human test subjects who, most people think, deserve to suffer the consequences of their folly anyway. “Which is curious, because anyone who discovered a widely effective hangover cure would make a great deal of money,” notes Acocella.
In describing the different physiological and psychological facets of a hangover, she quotes the master, British novelist and bon vivant Kingsley Amis. He describes the “metaphysical hangover”: “When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. . . . You have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is.”
Brilliant. Doesn’t it make you feel better? Luckily, Amis wrote three books on drinking — On Drink in 1972, Everyday Drinking in 1983 and How’s Your Glass? in 1984 — which have recently been gathered together and reissued as a single volume titled Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis. Maybe a little eloquence on the pleasures and pains of overconsumption is all the cure we need.
Here’s another reason to go to drinkboston’s World Cocktail Day event: you’re apt to pick up some fascinating knowledge from our guest bartenders.
Example: Brother Cleve was doing some research on the cocktail he’ll be mixing, the Bijou (gin, sweet vermouth, green Chartreuse, orange bitters). I found only a vague citation that the drink was named for the Broadway theater the Bijou, which opened in 1917. Turns out, says Cleve, that the cocktail predates the theater by 35 years. It seems to have first appeared in Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual from 1882.
Then he tells me this: after locating the Johnson book on eBay and opting not to pay the “thousands of dollars” asking price, he stumbled upon a free, digitized copy online. OMG!
The Johnson book (1934 edition) and three other out-of-print bar and cocktail guides are available as PDFs on the Exposition Universelle des Vins et Spiritueux web site. The EUVS is a wine and spirits museum in southern France built by Paul Ricard, who founded the spirits conglomerate Pernod Ricard in 1932. Its huge collection of artifacts is currently undergoing a two-year restoration, and part of the project involves putting some of the rare books in the collection online. In addition to the books (more of which are on the way!), there are drink lists and menus from the late 1800s to the 1930s. Right now the books available are:
Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual (1934)
The Cocktail Key, by Herbert Jenkins Ltd. (1920s)
American Bar: Recettes des Boissons Anglaises et Americaines (1904)
Collections and Creations, by Henry Lyman (1934)
One tiny caveat: you can download these books to your computer, but that’s about it. They are password-protected. You can’t print them out. You can’t copy images or pages from them or doctor them in any way. Believe me, I tried. Still, this is about as exciting as it gets for the cocktailian. See you Tuesday!
"Lauren Clark takes readers on a supremely sudsy tour of New England ales, lagers, pilsners, and porters. This is the New England the Puritans warned everybody about, but few have chronicled."
– Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in 10 Cocktails
There are a bunch of old cocktails with Boston in their name — Boston Cooler, Boston Sour, Boston Special — but, as I mentioned in a previous post about this matter, I have no intel on what makes a cocktail a Boston cocktail. I mean, it’s weird; there are other drinks named after cities, most notably the Manhattan, but also the Frisco, the Saratoga and the Toronto. These are singular cocktails, whereas Boston cocktails are numerous and without apparent rhyme or reason.
