Cocktail

“ Good liquor sharpens a man's brains wonderfully. Now, you try it some time. Let me have them mix a cocktail for you? I tell you, John, a cocktail is one of the finest drinks that ever was made, and this man at the bar—when I came on board, he thought he could make a cocktail, but he didn't know even the rudiments—I have taught him how to do it; and I tell you that secret will be worth a fortune to him, because if there is anything Americans like, it is to have their cocktails mixed correctly. There's no one man in all England can do it, and very few men on the Atlantic service. ”

“ The cocktail depends for its excellence not on careful measurements, but on the incalculable and indescribable thing called personality. The most skilful pharmaceutical chemist, trained all his life to the accurate weighing of scruples and measurement of drams, might well fail as a maker of cocktails. ”

“ The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires—to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. ”

“ As a matter of fact they seldom look on what we would call liquor at all, hardly ever getting a glympse of anything hard such as rye, scotch or gin, and a cocktail being practically a stranger and a repulsive one at that to them. ”

“ On my way to dinner I was compelled to accumulate the kick--two cocktails, three, and, if I met some fellows, four or five, or six, it didn't matter within several. Once, I was in a rush. I had no time decently to accumulate the several drinks. A brilliant idea came to me. I told the barkeeper to mix me a double cocktail. Thereafter, whenever I was in a hurry, I ordered double cocktails. It saved time.
One result of this regular heavy drinking was to jade me. My mind grew so accustomed to spring and liven by artificial means that without artificial means it refused to spring and liven. ”

“ Shake; strain into Cocktail glass and serve.
DURKEE COCKTAIL
Fill large Bar glass 2⁄3 Full Shaved Ice.
1 tablespoonful Bar Sugar.
4 dashes Lemon Juice.
3 dashes Curacoa.
1 jigger Jamaica Rum.
Shake well; strain into tall, thin glass; fill up with Plain Soda; stir gently and serve.
EAGLE PUNCH
Into a Hot Water glass drop:
1 lump Cut Loaf Sugar and dissolve in little Hot Water, crashing with muddler.
1⁄2 jigger Bourbon Whiskey.
1⁄2 jigger Rye Whiskey.
Fill up with boiling Water; twist a piece of Lemon Peel and grate Nutmeg on top and serve. ”

“ THERE are persons, as some of us can testify, who appear to be horrified if a Manhattan cocktail is mentioned in the most casual manner, and who are warranted to shy if they but get a whiff of a Martini, but give them a chance to partake of an oyster cocktail and you have added a substantial item to their sum of worldly pleasure. ”

“ The pungent and appetizing Cocktail is not for us, nor the enticing Rickey. Even the mild and genial Shandy-gaff must we shun, for it contains Beer, and the name of Beer is anathema in anything but negligible percentages. ”

“ The experience of the bar-tender is more than the learning of the lexicographer. Cobbler, indeed, is well explained as compounded of wine, sugar, lemon, and sucked up through a straw; but of cocktail we only learn that it is a compounded drink much used in America. ”

“ It seemed to me that afternoon at the Rathskeller that he and that chum of his had been drinkin'.”
“Drinking? Do you mean that they were intoxicated?”
“No, not exactly that; but they had a couple of cocktails while I was there.”
“Is that all? Oh, dear me! Daniel, you are SO old-fashioned. Your ideas don't change a single mite. In Trumet a cocktail is a dreadful thing; but here it isn't. Why, everybody drinks a cocktail before dinner. The Blacks always have them. There were cocktails at that dinner at their house.”
“I know there was, but I didn't see you drinkin' yours, Serena.” ”

“ Afternoon and early evening cocktail hours are an important event to patronize cocktail lounges and bars. Both sexes guzzle liquor and make new acquaintances. Women and men companions of all ages, mothers who are neglecting their children and homes, mothers with their daughters, youths, businessmen, brokers, politicians, and clubmen mingle with idlers, gamblers, bookmakers, policy operators, and narcotic distributors, and other human vultures. All are fashionably attired with assumed social graces and smooth voices. The smoky and noisy atmosphere is drowned by music. ”

“ Cocktails are the little brooms That whiskey way your will-power! A dark disease is Bright's disease, And will not yield to pill-power. Some may upon red rums descant Who never did decant rums, But I have eaten bitter bread Where bitters breed their tantrums. The fool will give his life to booze, The wiser man taboos that, And I'm a sad Budweiser man Than when I used to ooze that. ”

“ But I am inclined to think that the cocktail, the original of the species, Manhattan, Bronx or whatever it may have been, was invented by a woman. True, these drinks are now universally mixed by men. But the inspiration is unquestionably feminine. ”

“ As a matter of fact, quite a large number of people at a cocktail party don't drink cocktails at all, and in any case, they are taken in a very small shallow glass. The sort one usually gets at a cocktail party is the Bronx or Martini variety. The former consists, I believe, largely of gin and orange juice and has a very cheering effect. People mostly walk about and chat about nothing in particular. ”

“ The "morning-cocktail" men come next in my experience of early rising. I used to take my early cup of coffee in the cafe of a certain fashionable restaurant that had a bar attached. I could not help noticing that, unlike the usual social libations of my countrymen, the act of taking a morning cocktail was a solitary one. ”

“ The author has always used this recipe in compounding the above beverage for connoisseurs. Whiskey and gin cocktails, in bottles, may be made by using the above recipe, and substituting those liquors instead of brandy. ”

“ He had already consumed during that day a cocktail, colored, two glasses of brandy and water, cold, and a half bottle of champagne. His ordinary consumption of alcohol was moderate—a glass of green-seal sherry at twelve, a half bottle of St. Estéphe at lunch, and a small whisky-and-soda at dinner, or, if dining out or with guests, a couple of glasses of Pommery.
And to-day he had been drinking restaurant champagne “tres sec” and two half bottles of it! The excess was beginning to tell. It told in the slight flush on his cheeks, which, strange to say, did not make him look younger ”

“ Rub a sliced lemon around the rim of the glass, and dip it in pulverized white sugar, so that the sugar will adhere to the edge of the glass. Pare half a lemon the same as you would an apple (all in one piece) so that the paring will fit in the wine-glass, as shown in the cut. Put the above ingredients into a small whiskey glass filled one-third full of shaved ice, shake up well and strain the liquid into the cocktail glass prepared as above directed. ”

“ A cocktail is a horrid concoction of whisky, bitters, sugar and water, which are all mixed together with a "swidel" stick, which stick is always on the wander and for which a search has to be made. Nipping is too much in vogue in this country, but we are told that a lot of support is wanted, the air is so rarefied and the water has so much alkali in it, and therefore not supposed to be healthy, but it is most beautifully clear and delightfully cold to drink.
It certainly does disagree with the horses and cattle when first imported into the district. ”

“ Conversation at any time, on any topic, or with any person in Tucson (as elsewhere on the frontier) , invariably led to this ceremony. Cocktail drinking has a charm of its own, which lifts it above drinking as otherwise practised. Your confirmed cock-tail drinker is not to be confounded with the common sot. He is an artist. ”

“ But in case that everything does go smoothly, and nothing happens to nick your peace of mind, could anything be more delectable than a dinner which would unfold itself to your delighted palate in this order? To begin with: Clam cocktails, made, of course, with the little-neck variety; they should be put in half-dozen lots into small glasses, and seasoned with lemon juice, tabasco, salt, and the tiniest suspicion of onion juice—just [Pg 66] enough, you understand, to cause one to wonder if that delightful flavor is really onion. ”

“ Cocktails are sometimes offered in the drawing-room as a substitute for wine at dinner. If ladies are among the guests, these should be made very mild. It is perfectly proper to decline them, or indeed wine in any form. Where this is not served, whiskey and water may be offered to the men. To foreigners who are accustomed to taking wine with their dinner, it is a privation to go without it. ”

“ Tonics and bitters advertised as a cure for spring fever and a worn-out system are scarcely more than cheap cocktails, as one writer has derisively called them, and the amount of alcohol in some widely advertised patent remedies is alarmingly large and almost equal to that of strong whisky. ”

“ I looked around the tables and saw other girls drinking cocktails, so I took one. That was where I turned into the rocky road. People get careless around the newspaper offices. They work under a constant nervous strain and find that drink steadies them—for a time. ”

“ Among the chief American drinks are, being alphabetically arranged, cobblers, cocktails, cups, flips, juleps, mulls, nectars, neguses, noggs, punches—of which there are at least three score—sangarees, shrubs, slings, smashes, and toddies. ”

“ Like everybody else in the cocktail lounge, he was softening his brain with alcohol. This was a substance produced by a tiny creature called yeast. Yeast organisms ate sugar and excreted alcohol. They killed themselves by destroying their own environment with yeast shit.
• • •
Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne. ”

“ The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.
Suddenly one of these gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. ”

“ Before using the glass, rinse it in hot water.
↑ Sugar does not readily dissolve in spirits; it is necessary, therefore, in making hot toddy or punch to put in the water before the spirits, or at least sufficient of the water to entirely dissolve the sugar, taking care to warm the glass before pouring boiling water into it.
The best Hot Whiskey Punch is made with pulverized rock-candy. This is preferable to sugar, for any hot drink made of whiskey or brandy. ”

“ Rocky Mountain Punch.
(For a mixed party of twenty.)
(From a recipe in the possession of Major James Foster.)
Take 5 bottles of champagne. Take 1 quart of Jamaica rum. Take 1 pint of Maraschino. Take 6 lemons, sliced. Take Sugar to taste. ”

“ Serve with a straw.
↑ When this beverage is made for a number of persons to be used at table, it ought always to be made with boiling water, and allowed to concoct and cool for a day or two before it is put on the table. In this way, the materials get more intensely amalgamated than cold water and cold whiskey ever get. ”

“ Take Flavor with raspberry syrup. Fill the glass with shaved ice. Shake and mix thoroughly, then ornament with pieces of orange, pineapple, and berries in season, and dash with Jamaica rum. Serve with a straw. ”

“ Grate a sufficient number of quinces to make two quarts of juice, and squeeze them through a jelly-bag. Mix the ingredients all together, and put them into a demijohn, and shake well every day for ten days. ”

“ I have more than once intoxicated myself to deaden the pitiful pain of a toothache. By the same means I resolved to relieve the dire aching of my heart.
The spirit of wine was nigh at hand, and might be imbibed in many forms.
In one corner of the “smoking-saloon” was the “bar,” with its elegant adornments—its rows of decanters and bottles, with silver stoppers and labels its glasses, and lemons, and sugar-crushers—its bouquet of aromatic mint and fragrant pines—its bunches of straw tubes for “sucking” the “mint-julep,” the “sherry-cobbler,” or the “claret sangaree.” ”

“ Edibles were represented only by a single dish of fruit; the tablecloth, stained with wine and cigar ash, seemed crowded with every sort of bottle and every sort of glass. A magnum of champagne, empty, another half full, stood in the middle of the table; whisky, brandy, liqueurs of various sorts were all represented; glasses—some full, some empty, some filled with cigar ash and cigarette stumps—an ugly sight! ”

“ Chemistry seems to agree with the temperance society, that wine, beer, brandy, gin, whiskey, and rum are alcohol and water, mixed in different proportions, and with some slight differences of flavoring and coloring matter. In all these drinks, teetotalers maintain, alcohol is power, the other ingredients being mere dilution and flavoring. Wine, they assure us, is alcohol and water flavored with grapes; beer is alcohol and water flavored with malt and hops; Bourbon whiskey is alcohol and water flavored with corn. ”