Lesley M. M. Blume - Lets Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition

PRAISE FOR LESLEY M. M. BLUME AND LETS BRING BACK A tongue-in-cheek sparkler of an encyclopedia. Upon reading, you may find yourself in the kitchen, dressed in a silk lap robe and glamour slippers, stirring up a Tipsy Parson that would make Tallulah Bankhead proud. W MAGAZINE A humorous ode to preservation and the art of rediscovery. Heartily recommended.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Whimsical comical delightful Blumes book is about more than just populating your life with antique trinkets; its about curating your own charming lifestyle while celebrating the Wildean ideals of life as art. THE NEW YORKER If youre feeling lousy and you read this book, it awakens you to things that have made you happy in your life. It reminds you of a time when certain things, ideas, gestures got you through. [Lets Bring Back] promotes and revels in an idea of life thats lived in 3-D, not 2-D, a life lived civicly and civil-y. And that is a very wonderful thing. SALLY SINGER , Editor, T: THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Elegant whimsical As Blume herself might put it, we just think this book is the bees knees.

O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE Wistful zeitgeisty charming Lets Bring Back is like a stroll down memory lane. Whether youd carry a parasol down 5th Avenue or plop it in your caipirinha theres something for everyone. ELLE A charming slip of a book that quite deliciously and convincingly has the romantics among us pining for the ways of the dearly held past. CHICAGO TRIBUNE Copyright 2012 by Lesley M. M. Blume.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-4521-2128-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available under ISBN 978-1-4521-0826-1. DESIGNED BY SUPRIYA KALIDAS ILLUSTRATIONS BY GRADY MCFERRIN Chronicle Books LLC
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San Francisco, California 94107 www.chroniclebooks.com FOR Jennifer Lynn Pelka & Emily Arden Wells BON VIVANTS, EPIC IMBIBERS,
AND TREASURED FRIENDS CONTENTS INTRODUCTION IT IS OFTEN SAID THAT HISTORY EDITS ITSELF FOR A REASON . The same can be said for the by-products of each epochs popular cultureand delectables, confections, and libations are no exception, including the realm of cocktails. As food critic and historian William Grimes once noted: ixed drinks tend to be invented on a whim, named as an afterthought, consumed on the spot and forgotten in an instant.

Like movies, cartoons, television commercials, and funny T-shirts, most cocktails earn their oblivion. Yet even the best editors sometimes make misjudgments, and history is no exception. Plenty of splendid cocktails have been rudely shunted aside after falling out of vogueand their successors often do not hold a candle to the drinks they replace. Introducing Lets Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition , a celebration of once-the-height-of-fashion, now-largely-forgotten beverages from bygone eras that should be reintroduced todayor remembered at the very least. The selections in the following pagesculled from ancient times through the 1960sare by turns fizzy and flat, sweet and sour, lethal and prim. Some of them are absurd, others sentimental, and yet others outright scandalous.

At heart, this book aims to exalt the humor that has always permeated the world of mixology, something strongly reflected in the colorful nomenclature of mixed drinks over the yearsand it is in part on this nomenclature that the following drinks have been selected. Among the honorifics assigned to the included cocktails, we find impishness, encounter poignancy, and detect feigned modesty. Thumbing through this tome should feel like meeting a roster of high-spirited, eccentric characters at a party: the Bosom Caresser, for instance, is a charming rake; the Salom is a sensual, dangerous lady; the Runts Ambition, youll find, is quite a little dictator. Holly Golightly could hardly have pulled together a more jovial guest list. Gravely serious mixologists might bristle at the idea of a compendium of cocktails curated by the merits of their namesbut rest assured that most of these old-fangled drinks are actually quite delicious as well (with the exception, perhaps, of the Gingivitis Cocktail, but that concoction has been included for reasons other than its palatability). However, this seems like a good moment to present certain caveats about this book: Firstly, Lets Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition is not meant to be an all-inclusive catalog of historys cocktails; nor is it meant to be an in-depth how-to manual.

You will not be instructed on the perfect shaking technique here; nor will you be pestered with a soulful deliberation of the olive versus the twist. Store bookshelves teem with such works, published by some of historys legendary bartenders. Seek these out and you will find a bevy of gifted mentors. Nor is this book meant to be an earnest history of the evolution of cocktails; again, countless books and Web sites devote themselves to chronicling the origins of classic libations (often without much success, for ascertaining the accurate biographies of cocktails can be a maddening quagmire). Likewise, you should look elsewhere to find recipes for mainstay classic drinks that have already been revived in spades, such as Manhattans, Sidecars, Martinis, and Ward 8s. The drinks celebrated here are more obscureand yet each brims with personality and eagerly awaits its moment of rediscovery.

But dont worry: This book doesnt leave you in the lurch after making introductions. Each entry also offers its readers guidance about occasions on which to revive each drink. Staring at a long list of forgotten cocktails, how on earth are you supposed to choose one? This is where Lets Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition comes in handy. For example, you will be instructed to sip an Algonquin Cocktail when you want to feel witty, revive the Gold Cocktail to celebrate a windfall, and nuzzle a Poor Dear Old Thing Cocktail when youre feeling neglected and woeful (again). Each drink listed in these pages has been assigned that sort of duty, as a way to make itself useful to the modern imbiber. Its great fun not only to revisit the stories behind the creation of these cocktails, but also to imagine the millions of narratives caused by the drinking of them.

The following libations caused faces to be slapped, tears to be shed, babies to be made, fox trots and the Twist to be danced, marriage proposals to be uttered (and perhaps rescinded), and so on. The people who drank these drinks during the heights of their popularity did so for the same reasons we guzzle todays trendy cocktails: to celebrate, to escape, to drown sorrows, to feel bigger, to feel glamorousor feel nothing at all. People have drunk for these reasons since the beginning of time, and will continue to do so as long as booze can be squeezed out of grapes and grains. Thats one thing that the past will always have in common with the present and the future. The only thing that changes over time is the chariot used to spirit imbibers down intoxications giddy path. Without further ado, lets get down to the business of rediscovering some of historys more entertaining concoctions.