White whiskey or vodka?

How much have our drinking habits changed since the ‘70s?

I was recently given a copy of the 1972 edition of The Bartender’s Guide by Patrick Gavin Duffy, revised and enlarged by James Beard.


The book was first published in 1940. I don’t know how much updating James Beard did because drinks that I would have thought long-forgotten by the ‘70s are still featured. I’ve never heard of many of them.

Fixes, which are undefined, are made with sugar, water, and your choice of gin, brandy, rum, or whiskey. They’re served in “small tumblers with shaved ice.”

Daisies are described as “overgrown cocktails.”

Fizzes merit seven full pages. I’ve had a gin fizz, but never heard of an Irish Fizz, or a Morning Glory Fizz or a Rose in June Fizz.  Smashes are defined as “nothing more than junior-size Juleps.”
                                                                Gin Fizz

Then there are all sorts of Sangarees, Scaffas, Smashes, and Shrubs. There are also Slings, but no Arrows.

But it’s the vodka section that truly shows just how different today’s drinking habits are. It takes up less than two pages and lists just 12 cocktails. By way of comparison, the gin section is 54 pages long and includes more than 400 cocktails.

Vodka didn’t get to this country until after Prohibition ended and it wasn’t drunk much until an enterprising Smirnoff salesman dubbed it “White whiskey” and claimed it had no taste or smell.

Its popularity was helped by the Smirnoff slogan, “It leaves you breathless." Although the ads didn’t come out and say it, the idea was that unlike gin, vodka wouldn’t reveal that you’d been drinking. Your boss wouldn’t smell it on your breath when you came back to the office after a three vodka martini lunch. Up until then, martinis were made with gin.  

The first popular vodka drink was the Moscow Mule, a mix of vodka, ginger beer (sometimes ginger ale is substituted), and lime. It isn’t even in Beard’s book.

The Screwdriver is, but it’s called a “Golden Screw or Golden Spike.” There’s a Bloody Mary, but no Black or White Russian, no Cape Codder, no Sea  Breeze, no Vodka Gimlet. Definitely no Cosmopolitan but the “Blue Monday or Caucasian” comes close.
I’d skip the vegetable extract.

        The Blue Monday or Caucasian

        3/4 Vodka
        1/4 Contreau
        1 dash Blue Vegetable Extract (coloring)

        Stir well with ice and strain into glass. Coloring may be omitted.


 

Comments

[Jeri Quinzio]

Thank you. I love that cookbook, for its memories as well as its recipes, and I'm so glad others do as well.
Jeri

[Patricia Kerbein]

Thank you for taking me back to my grandmother's kitchen. When I read the article and recipe for the Maraschino Party Cake in the June issue of Ladies Home Journal and saw the picture of the yellow and black plaid cover of All About Home Baking cook book, I went right to my kitchen. There it was! My own wonderful bit of history. As the only daughter of an only child, I now possess this wonderful little cookbook. My mother and grandmother were fantastic cooks and they were great teachers in the "art of cooking and baking". I cherish all their cook books both bound and hand written.