The ABC of Cocktails - an out-of-print book review
Right after the wedding the BluePlate Misses and I went to lovely Rockaway Beach, Oregon for a short mini-moon (we’ll be flying off to sunny Mexico for the real thing this December).
We rented your classic cheesy beach house, with classic cheesy shell-encrusted furnishings and decor. However this beach house had a little something extra. In the kitchen, along with recipe clippings and random menus from long defunct restaurants was this lovely little book about cocktails.
“The ABC of Cocktails” is authored anonymously, but the 1953 edition credits the art and calligraphy to a Ruth McCrea. The dust jacket also features the 1953 price, $1.00.
It’s a short, little book - only about 60 pages, but in it is every cocktail recipe you might ever consider to be a classic.
The forward includes this lovely little passage that is at once steadfastly earnest and honest about the joys of alcohol consumption:
But cocktails needn’t be confusing, if this basic truth about all cocktails is made clear at once: they serve three entirely different social or human purposes, and should be chosen and prepared accordingly.
- First:
- Coctails provide a graceful and pleasant way to drink for people who enjoy or need the relaxation or the stimulation of a alcohol — they are gin whiskey, brandy, or rum pleasantly colored, flavored, and served in a pretty glass.
- Second:
- Cocktails are excellent stimulators of appetite when they are not sweet, and so provide a perfect before-dinner course which awakens the palate while it relaxes the nerves.
- Third:
- Cocktails afford the seldom-drinker a pleasantly flavored small quantity of alclohol to serve or drink for social purposes.
Obviously, if you are making cocktails for vigorous drinkers, you will make them long on liquor and short on flavoring and sweetening; if you are making them before dinner you will make them short on sugar or sweet flavorings; and if you are making them for amateurs, maiden aunts, and such, you will make them short on liquor and strong on flavoring and sugar.
I especially love these quips: “for vigorous drinkers” and “for amateurs, maiden aunts, and such”, I couldn’t have phrased that better with week to work on it, a full staff, and an intern. (where’s my coffee?)
I have more than a couple of cocktail books that I’ve purchased or I’ve been given as gifts. Other than a couple of quick experiments, these books sit unused on the shelf, or are used to decorate the bar. They don’t get used because the recipes are all so darn complicated and require 18 ingredients a piece.
It’s pretty annoying to go out and buy some odd, special ingredient for a cocktail, make the drink, discover it tastes sickly sweet, and then be left with a giant bottle of some syrupy old lady booze that never ever gets used. (I have a bottle of Anisette for anyone who’s interested).
Contemporary cocktail books also have this annoying habit of either being overly gourmet and snooty, or they take on some silly air of rebelliousness or hipsterism (because drinking is bad).
“The ABC of Cocktails” is none of that. Short, sweet (but not too sweet) and too the point. And with real recipes I really use.
I very nearly stole this book from the beach house. I really wanted to. What a great souvenir! But I decided I’d be depriving someone else of the knowledge it contained, so I let it stay.
Instead I wrote down all the publisher information I could find, and then googled it up. One e-purchase later I have my own copy of the 1953 edition. If you can find your own hiding in a dusty attic or in a used bookstore or on the internet, I highly recommend it.