Imbibe! (18 page)

But we’ve gone and left poor Mr. Chuzzlewit hanging: “Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to the reed; and cast up his eyes once in ecstasy.” While I wouldn’t go that far, I’d certainly rather have a Sherry Cobbler than not and sometimes—when it’s beastly hot, or when I’m in the mood for a caress rather than a left hook—a lot rather.

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
The amount of sugar (superfine) used should vary according to the kind of sherry. There were two kinds of sherry in general use: pale and brown. While it’s notoriously difficult to pin down historical styles of wine, it’s safe to say Thomas’s recipe is calibrated to the dry, pale kind—a fino or an amontillado. With these I like a little less sugar, but not much less—say, 2 teaspoons. If using a sweeter, darker sherry, such as an oloroso or, especially, a Pedro Ximenes, use still less sugar—1 teaspoon or less. The same rules apply to Cobblers made with other still wines.

For a
Catawba Cobbler
(“
Can
there be sin in such a nectar?” asked the
Knickerbocker
in 1855), you’re basically out of luck, quality Catawba wine having gone the way of the passenger pigeon (although I hear stirring noises . . . ). For a
Hock Cobbler
, though, use a nice Moselle, and a Bordeaux or other big red wine for the
Claret Cobbler
. For a
Whiskey Cobbler
, be aware that Thomas’s recipe calls for a full 4 ounces of the stuff, and is a heavy cargo to carry. It calls for no ornamentation.

Mr. Mayer, of Baltimore, instructs that “every particle of [the ice] is broken up into lumps not larger than a pea” and makes no mention of orange in his ur-Cobbler, merely pouring the sherry over “the fine cut peeling of half a lemon” and letting it sit for a couple of minutes.

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
As Thomas writes, “The ‘cobbler’ does not require much skill in compounding, but to make it acceptable to the eye, as well as to the palate, it is necessary to display some taste in ornamenting the glass after the beverage is made.” See the illustration, which shows “how a cobbler should look when made to suit an epicure.” The best way to execute this is by dissolving the sugar in an equal amount of water in a cocktail shaker, adding the wine and orange slices, filling it with cracked ice, and shaking vigorously (the shaking will muddle the fruit). Then pour it unstrained into a tall glass, lance it with a straw, and berry it up. The
Steward & Barkeeper’s Manual
suggests that the berries be shaken in with the rest. That makes for a fruitier drink, but a less attractive one.

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
This is a nice one to make with a rosé champagne.

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
It should be reinforced that the above is
per glass
, not per bottle. Dissolve the sugar first in a splash of water (or, of course, use a like amount of gum syrup).

I have given what were generally known as “egg drinks” a little section of their own, as they are neither Punches nor part of the lineage of the Cocktail. In segregating them, I am mirroring their place in the psyche of the Jerry Thomas-age drinker. Formerly a major part of day-to-day drinking, by the middle of the nineteenth century drinks made with eggs had seen their role greatly diminished. There were exceptions. Some Fizzes used eggs, or at least parts of them. There was a
Flip
of sorts, that took the mighty quaff of Colonial days—when Flips were made from quarts of ale and gills of strong rum, thickened with eggs and sugar and poured back and forth from pitcher to pitcher—and shrank it to something that would fit in a Cocktail glass (to make one, shake up an egg with a wineglass of liquor or fortified wine of your choice, a splash of syrup, and plenty of ice; strain and grate nutmeg over the top). And there was the Tom & Jerry, the cold-weather favorite that carried the egg drink’s banner into the twentieth century, if not always at full height. But the only time that egg drinks really recaptured their former importance was on Christmas and New Year’s Day, when they were mandatory.

“Dec 25—Cloudy & thawy—very muddy—Christmas day—good many drunken ones around town & some few arrests for drunk & disorderly—got up 12—read paper—went down to Charley Ockel’s [saloon] & got some egg-nog.” Thus did Alf Doten, then living in Virginia City, Nevada, begin his Christmas in 1866. But that’s how
everyone
began their Christmas, if they could afford it and knew where to get their hands on some eggs (in the days before 7-Eleven, not a given) and weren’t infected with temperance principles. The very idea of Christmas or New Year’s Day without the stuff . . . It just wouldn’t be a holiday.

When Jerry Thomas wrote in 1862 that Egg Nogg “is a beverage of American origin, but it has a popularity that is cosmopolitan,” he was not wrong; if early European travelers to the United States viewed it as one of the novelties Americans were inflicting on the art of drinking, by the 1860s it was a drink of universal, if strictly seasonal, popularity (when Thomas added that in the North “it is a favorite of all seasons,” he was certainly overstating the case). It was popular enough to have spawned numerous variants, most of them sharing the characteristic that Doten recorded on Christmas Day 1871: “Egg nog is deceiptful.” In fact, that’s what people always liked about it, as can be seen in the earliest account of the drink I know of, in an article printed in the
Pittsburg Gazette
in 1801 describing the “Late, Mad Circuit of Judge Brackenridge through Washington County,” in the course of which this distinctly unsober judge finds himself at a country inn. “He ordered egg nogg to be made; upon tasting it he swore and damned so horribly that the whole family were terrified at his profaneness and all this merely because the egg nogg had not whiskey enough in it.” (Using whiskey in the Egg Nogg was strictly a backwoods practice; swells and epicures preferred brandy and rum, or fortified wines in theirs. But any port in a storm, as the saying goes—in validation of which, there’s even a mezcal Egg Nogg on record, made by Texan prisoners in Mexico, back in the Lone Star days. One shudders.)

Of Thomas’s six Egg Noggs, I have included the three best, one for a largish group and two for individual drinks.

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
The 1887 edition of Thomas’s book suggests, correctly, that 10 eggs are enough; in any case, they should be “large,” not “jumbo.” As for the spirits: I prefer to split the difference, going with 5 ounces of cognac and 3 ounces of rum. In 1862, there was a far greater variety of Madeiras available than there is today. I like a Bual in this.

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
For Thomas’s
Sherry Egg Nogg
, replace the cognac and rum with two wineglasses of oloroso sherry and use only the yolk of the egg. Then “quaff the nectar cup.”

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
This is the only drink in Thomas’s book that explicitly calls for the use of the Cocktail shaker.

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
The cider should of course be hard. Try to get something artisanal, made from whole cider apples, not concentrate.