his shoulders, caressed him at the corners of his moustache, and mounted occasionally to the top of his Derby hat, whence he removed them with a patient persistency that had no effect upon them whatsoever.” Yeah.
CHAPTER 2
HOW TO MIX DRINKS, OR WHAT WOULD JERRY THOMAS DO?
Jerry Thomas would have laughed at the very idea that you could learn how to mix drinks from a book. Sure, you could pick up a few recipes, a few proportions in which to combine the standard ingredients, but turning them into a liquid work of art and making a bar full of skeptical, sporty gents give props as you do it? That’s like learning to box, or play Hamlet, from a book. The only way to master such things is to glue your eyes on the people who know how to do it and then practice, practice, practice. Accordingly, his recipes are essentially devoid of the helpful hints that one finds in modern essays in the genre. Indeed, not until the 1880s, when the profession was losing its ties to the sporting fraternity and started admitting miscellaneous clerks, waiters, and immigrants, did you find mixographers giving tips on technique, and even then they rarely tackled anything so basic as how to hold a shaker or what kind of strainer to use.
I can see their point. Thirty seconds spent watching Dale DeGroff effortlessly waltz the ice around in his mixing glass as he stirs a Martini will teach you more about the proper use of the barspoon than thirty pages of dense prose on the topic. In other words, this book can’t teach you how to mix drinks like Jerry Thomas; no book can. The Professor’s art came from constant practice and the knowledge that what he was doing was important to his customers and they’d think badly of him, who was as good a man as any of ’em, if he screwed it up. All I can do is explain how they used to do it, supply modern equivalents for things that no longer exist, and pass along a few hard-earned pointers from my experience with making these drinks. Fortunately, while that might not have you tossing drinks over your head in liquid rainbows as white rats frolic on your shoulders, it’ll at least have you turning out some pretty damn tasty drinks.
I. HOW THEY USED TO DO IT
If literature and painting can have their ages and eras, so then can mixology. In fact, considered from the perspective of the man behind the bar, the 140-odd years between the end of the Revolution and the imposition of Prohibition can be carved up into three Ages: the Archaic, the Baroque, and the Classic (in most arts, of course, the Classic precedes the Baroque; but what do you want from history that happens in a bar?). Fittingly enough, Jerry Thomas was born on the cusp of the second and died on the cusp of the third.
THE ARCHAIC AGE
In the formative years of American mixology, the tools were few, the recipes simple, the ingredients robust, and the mixology rough and ready. Sure, the more sophisticated towns maintained a handful of establishments where a tavern-keeper might have to invest in a few silver Punch ladles and lemon-strainers, a set of good china Punch bowls, and a barrel or two
By the mid-1870s, bartenders had taken to using beer mugs like this as mixing glasses, a practice that did not survive Prohibition. (Author’s collection)
of imported arrack to fill them with (the best kind came all the way from Indonesia and fetched four or five times the price good Jamaica rum did). But all the average barkeeper needed was a knife with which to cut lemons and what-have-you, perhaps a reamer to help juice them and a strainer to catch the seeds, a nutmeg grater, and one or two pieces of equipment peculiar to the craft.
The most important of these was the toddy-stick, a five- to ten-inch hardwood or silver (or whatever a sharp Yankee peddler could pass as silver) pestle with a rounded handle on one end and a flattened knob on the other. This, a somewhat more graceful version of the modern muddler, was the general mixing tool of the age,
CHAPTER 2
HOW TO MIX DRINKS, OR WHAT WOULD JERRY THOMAS DO?
Jerry Thomas would have laughed at the very idea that you could learn how to mix drinks from a book. Sure, you could pick up a few recipes, a few proportions in which to combine the standard ingredients, but turning them into a liquid work of art and making a bar full of skeptical, sporty gents give props as you do it? That’s like learning to box, or play Hamlet, from a book. The only way to master such things is to glue your eyes on the people who know how to do it and then practice, practice, practice. Accordingly, his recipes are essentially devoid of the helpful hints that one finds in modern essays in the genre. Indeed, not until the 1880s, when the profession was losing its ties to the sporting fraternity and started admitting miscellaneous clerks, waiters, and immigrants, did you find mixographers giving tips on technique, and even then they rarely tackled anything so basic as how to hold a shaker or what kind of strainer to use.
I can see their point. Thirty seconds spent watching Dale DeGroff effortlessly waltz the ice around in his mixing glass as he stirs a Martini will teach you more about the proper use of the barspoon than thirty pages of dense prose on the topic. In other words, this book can’t teach you how to mix drinks like Jerry Thomas; no book can. The Professor’s art came from constant practice and the knowledge that what he was doing was important to his customers and they’d think badly of him, who was as good a man as any of ’em, if he screwed it up. All I can do is explain how they used to do it, supply modern equivalents for things that no longer exist, and pass along a few hard-earned pointers from my experience with making these drinks. Fortunately, while that might not have you tossing drinks over your head in liquid rainbows as white rats frolic on your shoulders, it’ll at least have you turning out some pretty damn tasty drinks.
I. HOW THEY USED TO DO IT
If literature and painting can have their ages and eras, so then can mixology. In fact, considered from the perspective of the man behind the bar, the 140-odd years between the end of the Revolution and the imposition of Prohibition can be carved up into three Ages: the Archaic, the Baroque, and the Classic (in most arts, of course, the Classic precedes the Baroque; but what do you want from history that happens in a bar?). Fittingly enough, Jerry Thomas was born on the cusp of the second and died on the cusp of the third.
THE ARCHAIC AGE
In the formative years of American mixology, the tools were few, the recipes simple, the ingredients robust, and the mixology rough and ready. Sure, the more sophisticated towns maintained a handful of establishments where a tavern-keeper might have to invest in a few silver Punch ladles and lemon-strainers, a set of good china Punch bowls, and a barrel or two
By the mid-1870s, bartenders had taken to using beer mugs like this as mixing glasses, a practice that did not survive Prohibition. (Author’s collection)
of imported arrack to fill them with (the best kind came all the way from Indonesia and fetched four or five times the price good Jamaica rum did). But all the average barkeeper needed was a knife with which to cut lemons and what-have-you, perhaps a reamer to help juice them and a strainer to catch the seeds, a nutmeg grater, and one or two pieces of equipment peculiar to the craft.
The most important of these was the toddy-stick, a five- to ten-inch hardwood or silver (or whatever a sharp Yankee peddler could pass as silver) pestle with a rounded handle on one end and a flattened knob on the other. This, a somewhat more graceful version of the modern muddler, was the general mixing tool of the age,
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