When I was in college my father introduced me to a set of Books by Charles H. Baker Jr. The Gentleman's Companion is a two volume set first published in 1939. From the inscription my father received his first set in 1965. The books detail the travels of Mr. Baker around the world, and his diary of food and drink he consumed while traveling one quarter of a million miles in the 20s.
Volume I Being an Exotic Cookery Book, and Volume II Being an Exotic Drinking Book. Apparently only a small fraction of the recipes he jotted down are actually in the set. Its not so much the recipes, or the fantasy life he details that has always attracted me, it the style of writing. Just as you can spot a Hemingway sentence, a Baker paragraph speaks of a writing style not with us any longer. For example the beginning paragraph of chapter 1, book 2.
Being a Brief Dissertation on This Pleasant Subject in General; why Too Many Cocktails Fail through Over-Sweetness & Plurality of Ingredients; why Hot Drinks must be Hot and Cold Drinks Cold; & finally a Second Invitation to The Blender.
I love people who take liberties with punctuation, capitalization and writing style. But looking through all that, its a mood that a simple sentence can put you in. An art I never learned, but I recognize it.
My father took notes in the book, which is great, he commented on food and drink he tried and the results. In the back is a concoction of his own.
2 parts english gin
1 part light rum
1 part tequila
1 part lime juice
Sugar to taste (prefer bar syrup)
Blend with shaved ice and serve in ???? (can't read his writing)
Name: Sea Island Lunch Cocktail. Discovered by accident trying to find a good use for Tequila in 1968 when entertaining those Maconites present in the summer colony. It is truly a 4 star cocktail.
After my father's death, I took the another set of books from the library at home, which was similar to this set, but only about the adventures in South America. Sorry mom if you were looking for that wild boar recipe or the Brazilian punch ingredients.
Cheers
Me
Posts
1 comment:
I think I get the idea of that lunch cocktail. If you serve it to "those Maconites" at lunch, you won't have to deal with them at dinner. They might wake up for breakfast the next day. Referring to them as "those Maconites" made them sound pesky, someone you'd want to put out of your misery for a while!
Post a Comment