Imbibe! (9 page)

Whichever sugar you use, if you’re making an iced drink you’ll have to melt the sugar first in a little water, since both ice and alcohol impede its dissolution. Simply begin building the drink by putting the quantity indicated into your glass, add an equal quantity of water and give it a quick stir, then proceed with the rest of the recipe. Of course, you can also replace the sugar with gum syrup or simple syrup, as many period bartenders did (see Chapter 9). If you’re using a thick, 2:1 syrup, you can usually use a quantity equal to the amount specified of powdered sugar and the drink will come out fine. My general preference is to use what I call “rich simple syrup,” which is a 2:1 syrup made with Demerara sugar. Be warned, though: It’s dark enough to throw the color off of some of the more delicate tipples. Myself, I’ll take a little dinginess in return for the rich, sugarcane flavor it adds. And if you want to make your syrup with gum arabic, that will also add an amazingly smooth mouthfeel to liquor-heavy drinks like the Sazerac and the Improved Cocktail.

 

Modern practice is to twist a swatch of lemon or orange peel over the top of the drink at the very end, to get a little sheen of aromatic oil on the surface of the drink. With his usual care for consistency, Thomas suggests doing it this way for some plain Cocktails and squeezing it into the drink before stirring for others. That being the case, I prefer to follow the modern practice: cutting a 1½- × ½-inch strip of peel with a paring knife (including as little as possible of the white pith) and twisting it over the drink after mixing. Some nineteenth-century mixologists suggested that, its work being done, the spent peel should then be discarded. Others dropped it into the drink by way of garnish. As usual, Thomas goes both ways, with a preference for throwing it in. In that he is my guide.

 

The end of the nineteenth century saw a revolution in the art of the garnish. The admittedly fussy—but fresh and healthy—berries and fruits Jerry Thomas called for began falling by the wayside, to be replaced by an assortment of pickled or macerated items that could linger behind the bar for a while without going off. Some—pickled French hazelnuts, pickled walnuts—are no longer seen. Others—olives, “pimolas” (pimiento-stuffed olives)—are very much with us. Yet others fall into the realm of the un-dead. Here I am referring specifically to the maraschino cherry. In the 1890s, a maraschino cherry was nothing more than a sour cherry that had been macerated in maraschino liqueur. You can still buy these, made by the Luxardo company (who make the best maraschino). By the time Prohibition rolled around, this expensive, imported item had gone through the American production mill and emerged as either a blob of artificially colored cellulose or, hardly better, the product we know today, in all its zombielike glory.

I should also note that it wasn’t until the early twentieth century that bartenders figured out that cherries belong in sweet drinks and olives (or pickled nuts) in dry ones. Before that, you’d find either in either.

 

Nineteenth-century eggs were much smaller than the extra-super-jumbo ones we get today. Use the smallest ones you can find. When making drinks with egg white, you can get away with using one (modern) white for every two drinks.

 

Before we get into the spirits, a word about H
₂
O in its solid form. Because barkeepers carved their ice from large blocks, they could make it any size they wanted. This, too, became a part of the art, knowing which type of ice went into which type of drink. The 1887 rewrite of Thomas’s book added a note on the subject that neatly sums up the prevailing wisdom:

 

This is in general still sound, although vermouth drinks should be moved into the shaved ice category. Citrus drinks can go either way; I generally use shaved ice or its equivalent when I’m going to strain the drink, and lump ice when I’m not. Whenever a recipe calls for “shaved,” “fine,” or “cracked” ice, in the absence of a large block of ice and a shaver, simply take dry, cold ice, put it in a canvas sack and quickly whale the tar out of it with a mallet (this apparatus is known these days as a “Lewis bag,” after the modern manufacturer who revived it; you can also simply wrap the ice in a large, clean dish towel). Whatever type of ice you use, you can be a little more generous with it than Thomas and his peers were. It’s cheaper now and we’re more used to extreme coldness in drinks, so go ahead and fill the glass at least two-thirds with the stuff. (A note to the daring and the dexterous: for drinks that are shaken—i.e., tossed back and forth—Thomas specifies that the ice be “fine,” and indeed using cracked ice will theoretically make for a thick, supercooled slurry that shouldn’t splash about quite so much when you’re rainbowing it over your head. In theory.)

 

Happily, for the purposes of accurately reproducing the recipes contained in these pages, your glassware needs will be closer to Willard’s than the array listed in the G. Winter book. Here are the main glasses called for, with their capacities.

Lemons are lemons, more or less, and sugar is sugar. There might be some differences in incidentals between what was available along those lines before Prohibition and what we can get now, but they won’t be decisive. Spirits, however, are entirely products of art, and though art is long and life is short, it’s still subject to the game of telegraph that is the transmission of information over time. I have taken the liberty, therefore, of suggesting some brands that in my experience work well in historical drinks; that, to the best of my knowledge, are reasonably close to what would have been available in Jerry Thomas’s day and immediately after.

Whatever spirits you use, they should ideally be at what would have been considered “proof ” at the time, which translates to around 116 degrees in the system we use now. Unfortunately, genever (aka Dutch gin) and brandy are rarely marketed at this strength, so to compensate you’ll have to cut the water back.

 

 

There is no substitute for real absinthe. The best modern ones are made by Ted Breaux and are available, at great expense, from abroad. (The fact that they are not legal in America does not help to lessen that expense. Go to
www.bestabsinthe.com
; I like the Edouard version.) But a bottle will go a very long way if used in dashes. Failing that, there is Lucid, a new, U.S.-legal absinthe also created by Breaux. Although somewhat lower in proof and less pungent than his others, it will certainly do. Of the legal substitutes, Absente is closest in proof and Versinthe closest in flavor.

 

 

Before prohibition, the “Jersey Lightning” used in the better bars would not have been blended. For genuine American applejack, there’s only one player left standing: Laird’s, of New Jersey—in fact, it’s probably the oldest brand of liquor in the country. Unfortunately, the regular Laird’s applejack one sees around is a blended product, and is hence mostly neutral spirits and water. If you can’t find their (pure) bonded version or their old apple brandy—and odds are you won’t be able to—better to use a VS-grade Calvados from France (and, while you’re at it, drop Laird’s a line encouraging them to goose up their distribution of the bonded stuff).

 

 

Cognacs and brandies were sold at rather higher proof than they generally are now. Unfortunately, there’s no way to adjust for this other than to reduce any quantity of water that might be in the drink. In general, for the best drinks you’ll want to use a VSOP-GRADE cognac or better. This is pricey, but it’s one place where you’ll just have to grin and be a sport. It’s worth it.

 

 

The champagnes popular in Jerry Thomas’s day were much sweeter than those we prefer today. The brut champagnes we favor did not become popular in America until the 1890s. That said, I still prefer my drinks with brut.

 

 

This orange-flavored liqueur was one of the essentials of the bar. Early versions were based on young brandies or rums, rather than the neutral spirits used today. For me, the best substitute is therefore the cognac-based Grand Marnier, which was originally sold as “Curaçao Marnier.” The Marie Brizard Orange Curaçao is also acceptable.

 

 

This one’s a real problem. In the 1862 edition of Jerry Thomas’s book, fourteen of the fifteen gin-drink recipes don’t specify what kind or style, and the fifteenth calls merely for “old gin,” without indicating its origin. Given this lack of detail, most modern readers and mixologists have assumed that Thomas’s Gin Cocktail, Gin Julep, Gin Smash, and all the rest were based on English-style gins, either the lightly sweetened Old Tom or the unsweetened London dry. In the course of researching this book, it has become increasingly clear to me that the gin Thomas had in mind was in fact Hollands; a Dutch genever or an American approximation of it (this would explain that “old gin” in his book; despite its name, Old Tom gin was not aged any longer than the time it took to ship the barrels to their destination, whereas Dutch gins were often aged).

For one thing, there’s no evidence that English-style unsweetened gin was available in America in any quantity until the 1890s. Even Old Tom gin, although sold in America since at least the late 1850s, had very limited distribution until the early 1880s: Before that it was known and occasionally called for, but it was still a relative rarity. On the other hand, import figures show Dutch gin coming into America in large quantities at least through the 1870s, and Dutch brands such as Meder’s Swan (one of the most popular brands of spirits in America for much of the nineteenth century) and Olive Tree were frequently advertised. What’s more, if distiller’s handbooks are to be believed, domestic American gins were modeled on the heavier, maltier Dutch style rather than the lighter, cleaner English style.

In the 1876 second edition of his book, Jerry Thomas added a further six gin drinks but still did not specify which kind; again, one must assume either that he meant genever or that he considered genever and Old Tom close enough in style that it made no difference which was used (both were in fact sweetened). The only mention of unsweetened gin in America I’ve been able to find prior to the 1890s recommends its virtues as a fabric cleaner.

Eventually, with the introduction of dry vermouth as a mixing agent and the American public’s turn to lighter cocktails in the 1880s, Old Tom and then London dry gin (as well as the also-unsweetened Plymouth gin) began to displace the richer Dutch style. Finally, in the anonymous 1887 revision of Thomas’s book, we find gin styles specified. Eight of the drinks call for Old Tom gin, including the Martinez. But there are still twelve drinks calling explicitly for “Holland” gin. It was only with the rise of the Dry Martini, in the 1890s, that Dutch gin began disappearing from the bartender’s armory. Unfortunately, it mixes poorly with dry vermouth, and that would prove to be the death of it as a dominant spirit in America. From then until Prohibition, unsweetened gins—Plymouth and London Dry—are the cutting edge, although one still finds plenty of Cocktails and other drinks calling for Old Tom and even Holland gin.