Alcademics

Category: books

  • History of the El Diablo Cocktail in Trader Vic’s Books

    I was trying to find the first reference to the El Diablo cocktail recently.

    Mexican El Diablo



    1/2 lime

    1 ounce tequila

    1/2 crème de cassis

    Ginger Ale

    Squeeze lime juice into a 10-ounce glass; drop in spent shell. Add ice cubes, tequila, and crème de cassis. Fill glass with ginger ale.

    Searching the web, the earliest reference I read to it was from Trader Vic's books of 1946 and 1947.

    I asked tiki expert Martin Cate, who has these books, if he knew if the drink was a Trader Vic original. After his research it's still not entirely clear, but the research is interesting in itself.

    Martin says:

    IT IS in the 1946 TV Book of Food and Drink- It is
    called a "Mexican El Diablo" and it IS singled out as an original
    cocktail.
     
    IT IS in the 1947 TV Bartender's Guide again as a
    "Mexican El Diablo", but does not declare it an original- although that book
    does not specify.
     
    It's not in the TV Kitchen Kibitzer
    1952
     
    IT IS in the TV Pacific Island Cookbook of
    1968, but now called "El Diablo" only
     
    IT IS in the TV Bartender Guide Revised 1972 as an
    "El Diablo", but does not say it's his.  This edition DOES call out
    original drinks.

    Thanks Martin!

    If anyone finds an earlier reference to the El Diablo or Mexican El Diablo, please let me know.

  • The Intercontinental Cocktails of Charles H. Baker

    I wrote a story in this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle about Charles H. Baker's cocktails and their popularity, centering around the program at Heaven's Dog in San Francisco.

    "A hazy memory of a night in Havana during the unpleasantnesses of
    1933, when each swallow was punctuated with bombs going off on the
    Prado…"

    erik adkins read charles h baker's the gentlemans' companion at heaven's dog in san francisco This line by Charles H. Baker Jr. introduces not an account of Cuban
    rebellion but the cocktail Remember the Maine, which he was drinking
    there while it took place. Baker wrote about drinks from his travels
    around the world in the early 1900s, mostly during Prohibition, when
    the drinking in the United States wasn't legal – or very good.

    Other drinks in Baker's two-volume "The Gentleman's Companion" are
    introduced from such ports of call as Beijing, Monte Carlo and Bombay
    (now Mumbai), ripe with mentions of princes, peacocks, cruises up the
    Nile and hanging out with Hemingway.

    Bartenders in particular have latched on to Baker as a patron saint
    of good living, and his cocktails and quotes from his writings are both
    appearing on drink menus.

    "I've always thought that when you have a drink there's so much that
    comes with it: your friends, who you're with, the time of the day,"
    says Erik Adkins, general manager of Heaven's Dog in SoMa. "And (Baker)
    captured all that.."

    But for all the excitement about Baker's cocktails, they share an unfortunate common trait.

    "I think the recipes mostly need a lot of work," says Adkins.

    read the rest of the story here.

    In the story I also mentioned the forthcoming coffee/cocktail bar Fort Defiance, in Brooklyn, that should be opening later this month. But that's not the only bar to put Baker back on the menu:

    The Brooklyn bar Clover Club dedicated a small section of the menu to what owner Julie Reiner says are Baker’s best cocktails this winter, including the Remember the Maine.

    In Portland, Ore., the bar Beaker and Flask, named for the subtitle of one volume of “Gentleman’s Companion,” is set to open. Owner Kevin Ludwig says he’ll be featuring Baker drinks on the menu, though not exclusively.

    In Amsterdam, speakeasy-style bar door 74 recently offered several pages of Baker drinks, with the menu letterhead mimicking the Baker’s own.

    Baker's globe-hopping cocktail book is now helping those cocktails hop back around the world.

    Bakerbookfromchron

  • The History of the Ice Trade

    Frozenwatertrade I recently finished reading The Frozen Water Trade: A True Story by Gavin Weightman. The book is the story of Frederic Tudor, whose wacky idea of cutting ice in winter from ponds in Massachusetts and selling it to people in warmer climates in the summer turned into a 100 year industry until refrigerated ice became readily available. Tudor's ice was shipped as far as Martinique, India, San Francisco (around the tip of South America where there was plenty of ice already), New Orleans, and throughout the American South.

    Of course, my interest in the book was purely cocktail-related. The sale of ice was directly responsible for the creation of drink categories including juleps, cobblers, and smashes, and created the need for cocktail shakers as well as straws. Iced drinks became popular with Englishmen in India, but didn't catch on in England (not for lack of trying to sell it there). American cocktails stood out from English and other ones in their need for ice (as evidenced by books like Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks), and grew in format and in number because of this ingredient.

    As we know the cocktail was an American invention and probably its first native cuisine, we can probably chalk up a lot of the credit for America's famous drinks and bartenders (pre-Prohibition) to this one guy who created a world-wide industry out of nothing but freebies- frozen lakes, sawdust to keep it cold through the summer, and room in ships' holds as ballast on trading routes.

    The book itself isn't the "page-turner" as described on the cover, nor does it delve too deeply into the discussion of the impact on cocktails, but with an understanding of what came later in American cocktail history, it's fascinating for its implications. 

    An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

  • The Gentleman’s Companion’s Companion

    Baker
    The Gentleman's Companion     by Charles H. Baker is one of the most entertaining historical cocktail books, if not always the most useful. It contains cocktail recipes gathered from Baker's travels around the world, but the best parts are the drink introductions and settings. Like this one:

    THE JAMAICAN BLACK STRIPE, another Heartener from that Tropical Paradise, that May Be Served either Hot or Cold
    If served cold: work 2 tsp strained honey into 1 tbsp boiling water until well dissolved. Add 1 jigger Jamaica rum, shake with cracked ice, pour into stemmed cocktail glass and dust with nutmeg. Furnished us by Emerson Low, Esq., gentleman, student, Rhodes Scholar, author and delightful dilettante, who, now that he is married and possessed of child and responsibility, is not nearly so diverting, it pains us to say.

    It's a cocktail recipe, and a total diss.

    Anyway, my pal St. John Frizell has been studying the life of Charles H. Baker. He gave an awesome talk at Tales of the Cocktail this year, and published a long biography in the Oxford American this summer. Now he's posted the story on his website. It's a must-read for all Baker fans.