Baker - 2001;2000;

JIGGER, BEAKER, & GLASS

DRINKING AROUND THE WORLD

Charles H. Baker Jr.

THE DERRYDALE PRESS

Published in the United States of America
by The Derrydale Press

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK, INC.

Copyright 1992 by The Derrydale Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baker, Charles Henry, 1895

Jigger, beaker, and glass : drinking around the world / Charles H. Baker, Jr.

p. cm.

Originally published: Gentlemans companion. Vol. 2. Lyon, Miss. :
Derrydale Press, 1992.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-58667-050-4

1. Beverages. I. Baker, Charles Henry, 1895 Gentlemans companion. Vol. 2. II Title.

TX815 .B19 2001

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Drink no longer Water but use a little Wine for thy
Stomachs sake and thine often Infirmities...

Saint Paul, the Apostle,
1 Timothy, V. 23

DEDICATION

To all that Company of Friends, from Pine to Palm,
with whom we have So Happily Raised the Glass.

NOT LONG AGO we asked a drinking friend of ours, an old and accomplished hand, how it was he came to the art of imbibing.

When I was a very young boy, he replied, my father set a fine example. This was in that breathing space between the wars when every man worth his salt, from Bangor, Maine to Barstow, California, took pride in rounding off the day with a tip of the arm or two. This was as true for the working man as it was for the bank presidents and executives of the world, the class to which our friends father belonged.

My father drank regularly and with flair, and our family clicked happily along in this manner for some time. Then America joined World War II and true tragedy ensued.

Your father went overseas? we asked naively.

Even worse, we were informed. Too old for combat, our friends father was prepared to sit out the war on the sidelines, keeping home front spirits high with... well, his usual flow of spirits.

While much has been made of the wartime shortages of sugar, shortening, and gasoline, far less has been said about the shortage of that other staple, scotch whiskey. And for this crucial shortage there was, alas, no ration card.

Enterprising drinkers fell back on a method perfected during Prohibition: the dubiously legal purchase. A well-to-do and well-connected drinker, like our friends father, who had over the years favored a particular bar with his business, now had the edge in purchasing directly from the bars proprietor. There was, however, a catch. Single bottles could not be bought. The private buyer could purchase only by the case. And, for every case of scotch he bought, he had to purchase an equal amount of rum, a liquor that was available in great surplus, though the actual demand was low. Seeing how things stood, enterprising bar owners across the country now seized the opportunity to turn a quick profit. The widespread practice of selling scotch case-for-case with rum gave rise to the saying, a bottle of rum for a bottle of scotch. In other words, you may buy the wheat, but you must also buy the chaff, and at a pretty penny, too.

I was about fourteen at this time, our friend went on. My father had now secured a supply of his much-loved scotch, but this resulted in an overflow of rum. Not one to waste anything, he fell into the habit of offering me an after-school topper. I would come through the door and he would say, Well, how about a rum and coke? I enjoyed those afternoons and my father, very handily, got rid of his rum. Which only goes to show you that behind every drinker, there is a great story. And behind every great drinker, there are a great many stories.

In the realm of great drinkers, there are few whose acquaintance is as worth the trouble of making as Charles Baker Jr. We first encountered him in a used bookstore, in the distinctly out of print section, while researching our book, Vintage Cocktails. We had barely gotten him home and properly opened up before we were raving to our friends, Have you read him? and calling used book stores in search of copies to pass along to the truly deserving.

Thus we were delighted to hear that Derrydale has undertaken the worthy mission of putting Mr. Baker into print again, for there are almost as many reasons to read The Gentlemans Companion, now titled Figger, Beaker, and Glass, as there are beverages to accompany our reading. Unlike works whose relevance evaporates with their times, Charles Bakers work sparkles across the intervening decades, emitting its cheerful invitation to take very seriously the frivolities of life.

The first reason most people turn to Figger, Beaker, and Glass is because they are searching for a particular and authentic recipe. On this score, Mr. Baker will not disappoint. Our present era takes a sadly haphazard approach to the business of mixing drinks. Everything seems to come with a wedge of citrus lopped onto the side, cocktails that should be shaken and strained are neither, and complex drinks are reduced to a few simple components. Were the author of Figger, Beaker, and Glass to return to earth, we can only imagine the extent of his horror.

Charles Baker was, above all, a stickler for getting it right. His first experiment in authenticity was to work his way through a mixology book of his own era, a comprehensive volume published in 1931. We cut no corners; we didnt cheat, he wrote. We measured accurately, chilled properly. Yet his efforts ended in dark disappointment. The bald-faced conclusions were as plain as the nose on our facemuch of that welter of mixed things with fancy names were egotistically-titled, ill-advised conceptions of low-brow mixers who either had no access to sound spirits or, if they did have, had so annealed their taste buds with past noxious cups that they were forevermore incapable of judicious authority.

To correct this sorry state of affairs, Mr. Baker set out to create a reliable compendium of drink recipes, a job he undertook with the utmost sincerity. In his quest, Mr. Baker traveled thousands of miles and made himself the friend and confidant of barmen from Saratoga to Singapore. The result is a compendium of recipes that would otherwise, through negligence and modern improvement, have been lost to the ages.

In creating Figger, Beaker, and Glass, Charles Baker rescued a unique sliver of history. He also gave much of himself. His running commentary, as much as the recipes themselves, provides a good share of the books charm. When it comes to the business of drinking, he is never without opinionsopinions that are often set forth, in numbered paragraphs or Words to the Wise, as rules governing one aspect of mixology or another.