Another Day, Another Cocktail

Also, another cocktail book: this time, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie and Beyond: 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them by Ted Haigh. First off, it’s a great book: 1) it’s spiral bound to stay in place; 2) the artwork and accompanying images are fantastic — each drink has its own image, many of them historical; 3) the notes are great, and lively and down to earth but still informative. It’s also from 2009.

In general there’s a strange fetishization about old tymey-tyme cocktails. I don’t know if it’s a Nick & Nora sort of [insert worldwide hand motion for jerking off] this or that or what it is. It’s interesting, for sure, but I don’t totally buy that what’s old was necessarily better. Technology is important and real, and building on human learning and experience is what progress is all about.

But at the same time, it is really interesting to think about what dumb-ass rich 20 somethings were drinking back in days of yore. Sort of.

Apparently they liked fruit juices. So many of these cocktails in Vintage seem to revolve around orange juice or pineapple juice or lemon juice or (my favorite) orange and lemon juice. It’s like Al Fuckin’ Swearengen is trying to impress cocksuckers at the Gem; break out the fuckin’ canned peaches.

I mostly disregard orange juice but we have lemon juice around all the time: the Santa Cruz Organic Lemon juice is great; one of the local stores carries it.

[Looking back at what I’ve glibly jotted down, I should add that vintage cocktails are a glimpse into an evolving culinary tradition, and are a fascinating micro-level look at what life was like nearly 100 years ago.]

Anyway, back to the cocktail: tonight, the Barbara West Cocktail (page 59), which has gin, sherry (amontillado preferred, which is basically the first time in forever that we have the appropriate sherry on hand), lemon juice and Angostura bitters. It’s good (duh, all cocktails are good). I would drink this again. I think it’s also missing something — ever so slightly. The flavors kind of bob around each other — floral gin, nutty sherry, puckery lemon juice — without melding. It’s possible more Angostura would have been good, but the recipe clearly called for “one small dash.” In summary, I’m not sure this needs “fixing,” per se. Maybe it’s just an excellent starting point: gin, sherry and lemon juice is boss, and worth returning to [think about tweaks].