W. C. Whitfield - W. C. Whitfields Mixed Drinks and Cocktails: An Illustrated, Old-School Bartenders Guide

Arrangement copyright 2015 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. Foreword copyright 2015 by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. Heres How: Mixed Drinks originally published by Three Mountaineers, Inc. in 1941. Just Cocktails originally published by Three Mountaineers, Inc. in 1939.

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We are awash in the midst of a phenomenal second (or is it the third? fourth?!) Golden Age of the craft cocktail, and the Information Age is digitally aiding and abetting its rapidly democratizing flow of critical information in the way of ebooks, blogs, feeds, and boards.

Yet we still find ourselves creeping around dusty bookstore stacks in search of some forgotten treasure that everyone else has happily overlooked. Cocktail books are a rather motley crew; not unlike the denizens who colorfully patronize the bars that have inspired great drinks, better times and worse decisions, but not always in that order. So why do we love these relics so much? Surely some of that answer must lie in the perfectly imperfect desire to combine what is eternally classic with what is currently cool. We love the glimpse back into another erapartly because some things are so implausibly different, and other things are so deliciously familiar. Perusing classic cocktail books is like reading a diary written by long-dead ancestors, preserved under a dusty floorboard in their bedroom. Their diction and slang both delight and confound, their measurements and serving styles are equal parts specific and inscrutable, their ratios and formulae surely derived from ingredients and modifiers completely alien to our own.

And yet we pore through them and read the recipes and coo over the illustrations, and then, just this one time, we make a drink weve never heard of, the contents of which we are slightly proud (and simultaneously slightly ashamed) to possess in our home bars, and give it the ole college try. To be fair, it usually does not end well. But that was hardly the point, was it? Its that knowing peek behind the curtain, behind the staid dusty official accounts of long forgotten social norms and customs, to the very fuel that ignited passions and theatrics from frontier saloons to speakeasy dancefloors to tiki huts. These books are snapshots of Gilded Age saloons, Parisian hotel bars, and suburban dinner parties. Theyre also instruction manuals for how to parse our ever-evolving tastes and gleefully snicker at our antecedents clearly lacking sense of balance and sophistication. Ahem. Ahem.

Some recipes collected here inspire wonder and awewhat kind of an epic night out must warrant a silver absinthe fizz (a rather overproof way to start your morning) as a day-after restorative tonic? Others remind us of how drink names can change over time: a Dry Martini from 1939 is extraordinarily wet by todays standards, while a French Martini used to mean a fairly dry gin martini but now refers to cloying confection comprised of vodka, pineapple, and Chambord. A modern bartenders equipment list is nearly identical to the bar kit listed here, though I would quibble with the authors assertion that shaken drinks are a listless sort to be avoided at all cost. For the most part, the instructions given by the esteemed Mr. Whitfield are still perfectly valid. His voice is as cheeky as the illustrations accompanying the text, and its clear that this amiable gent would be quite adept plying his time-honored craft behind any reputable craft cocktail bar today. Rather than making grand statements about definitive recipes, he urges his readers to try the various versions of the same drink hes collected to determine which is best for them.

This sound advice is equally valid today. If most cocktail recipes were viewed more as gentle guidelines rather than hard-and-fast rules, people would be less intimidated by them and therefore emboldened to tweak proportions to suit their own tastes. So take this bartenders advice and learn the heart of the cocktails you love, rather than simply memorizing a recipe. Then open these books and find your new favorites amidst these hundreds of delightful drinks from a bygone age. Joaqun Sim Partner, Pouring Ribbons, NYC 2012 TOTC Spirited Award for American Bartender of the Year Then to the Flowing Bowl did I adjourn My lips the Secret well of Life to learn, and lip to lip it murmurd while you live, Drink!for once dead you never shall return O MAR K HAYYAM

We of this new world known as the United States of America are prone to yield the palm of cookery to the old world on the other side of the Atlantic. As witness of this point take note of the fact that the famous chefs of our grandest hotels are almost invariably French, or Italian, or Spanishusually of Latin origin, anyway.

And every historic restaurant of gay New York and old New Orleans, almost without exception, gained its place in the sun because of the culinary skill of a foreigner. But when it comes to the art of mixing drinkswell, that is a horse of another color. In that field the new world tops the oldand how! The American bartender of the Gay Nineties was an institution. His fame spread to the four comers of the globe, and visitors to our shores from the continent bowed before his skill in concocting tempting mixtures of liquid lightning. He wasand still isin a class by himself. We may go to Europe for our chefs, but Europe comes to us for its bartenders.

Just why the American excels in this field is hard to say, but it is possibly for the same reason that we lead the world in inventive genius (an acknowledged fact). That reason is that we will try anything once. We are not so tied by age-old conventions, are not so content to let custom rule us. We like to experiment in all fields, and sowhen it comes to mixing drinkswe stop at nothing. It is possible, of course, that many digestive tracts have been impaired by these experiments (we will concede that much to the abstainers), but the discovery that a smooth, mellow Manhattan cocktail will work miracles with a laggard appetite certainly makes up for such damages. And the soothing qualities of Creme de Cacao blended with Cream de Cow has done such wonders for those same digestive tracts that we can surely forgive some mistakes.