Jerry Thomas (1)Besprekingen

This 150 year old cocktail guide is an amusing historical artifact. The drinks are old fashioned varieties that are seldom seen and not suitable to today’s tastes. However, it’s a fun history to have around for those interested in mixology.

Wow that was indeed a guide on how to mix all kinds of drinks! I can't wait to try some of these!
I would love if there were some pictures in-between the text though.

The original cocktail book, so it's got some very old fashioned drinks in there. The punches for 20 are awesome to read about, as are the sly comments in some of the drink descriptions. A lot of the recipes are variations on each other (make that drink with this other alcohol), but it's a useful resource (if occasionally in need of translation for the amounts, the glossary in the back helps).½

This is a fun little book of cocktail history. It may not be the most practical book, but it's neat to see the historical recipes for classic drinks. I especially love the punch section, which involves mixing gallons of ingredients into massive concoctions. There are many non-standard measures used, but those are also fun to look up in order to figure them out. Probably more of a conversation piece than anything else, but definitely also contains some useable recipes.

As a piece of history, this is fascinating stuff. Cocktails were not super-sweet affairs designed to mask the taste of liquor and measurements for single drinks often include "a wineglass of rum." Flips, Fizzes and all manner of punches are present.

On the other hand, very little of it is practical. Even if one scales back many of the ingredients to get reasonable quantities, many ingredients are difficult to find. For those that do, it's clear to see why so many of these cocktails in the book have not survived 100+ years. We did brave up and attempt a raw-egg rum flip, and while it wasn't bad-tasting, the texture if one let it sit too long...well, it's clear these were meant to be consumed quickly and in heavy volume.

Really, it's a fun read for the historical perspective, but one won't find many practical applications for today's bar.½

The Bon Vivant's Companion is a lovely historical text for a drinks enthusiast and there are some nice pieces of prose about the origin of some iconic American cocktails like the mint julep. But it's probably of limited use to someone who wants to learn to mix drinks.

This is a LibraryThing Early Reviewer book.

This book, which was originally published in 1862, is an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the history of cocktails. It's also essential for any bartender who wants to expand his craft and experiment. Most of the drinks herein would be much too sweet and heavy for my own cocktail tastes, but some sound quite tasty, and it seems like a good jumping-off point.

Very interesting when read as a cultural history, but perhaps not a practical reference for modern mixologists. Some of the recipes will seem a bit confusing to modern bon vivants, but perhaps the directions were obvious to Jerry Thomas's contemporaries.

I read a certain amount of historical fiction, so this book makes for an interesting reference work. "What exactly is that drink that the hero/villain is knocking back?"

I haven't had the opportunity to test out any of the drinks but the Tea Punch looks particularly intriguing. And I must try the Mulled Wine Without Eggs. Salmonella was obviously not a concern in those days; the thought of those flips and real eggnogs just makes me shudder!

As usual, Hesperus Press has produced a quality soft-cover edition with clear typeface and a nice sturdy cover.

Reading this book is amusing as a piece of historical lore (the content is ~150 years old). Drinks and drinking were very different back then. But onto the recipes....

We decided to throw a large party and try 5 of the recipes. Selecting the drinks took a while as there are many very similar recipes and lots of slightly different ways to mix the exact same ingredients. You will not find vodka, tequila, or any "infusions" here. It's a brandy, gin, and wine book for the most part. We also were as bit grossed out by all the flips (I'm not putting any raw egg into my cocktails, thank you very much). We decided on: Brandy punch, Knickerbocker, Cider nectar, Real Georgia Miny Julep, and Gin Fizz to get a good sampling from the different chapters.

Most of the ingredients were easy to find (not true of all the recipes). The proportions were very imprecise and servings very large (they didn't drive cars back then obviously). Fortunately we are experienced mixologists and could wing it, but a novice could get some pretty weird results.

The drinks themselves were quite good, and very different from today's typical menu choices. Our guests enjoyed themselves and sampled everything and other than some people who typically don't drink the hard stuff the comments were positive. The brandy punch was strong but fruity, the cider nectar was a bit bland but nice enough, and I will be revisiting the Mint Julep throughout the summer! Yum.

The organization is by drink type. I am longing for a good bar book organized by alcohol type, but that wouldn't make sense for this book anyway. Luckily there is a short glossary for terms like "gill."

I recommend this book if you want to try some different drinks and basically know how to put together the proportions and servings sizes. It is not encyclopedic, nor scientific, so if that's what you;'re looking for try another book.

This book is an interesting look at bartending, as it started out. I enjoyed seeing what ingredients were available back then, though I found that to actually make the recipes, sometimes I had to make a halfway version, using the ingredients from this book and the measurements from a more up-to-date source, attempting to keep the proportions right. Thomas seemed obsessed with lemonade-type drinks. I'm not sure that I actually saw the lemon drop in this book, but I saw ten drinks that reminded me of it. The entire section of virgin drinks ("temperance drinks"), was lemonade, in various forms and degrees of fizziness. Also, the quantities on some of the drinks were impossible. I wanted to try a shrub, as it was something new (well, actually very old) that I'd never heard of, but doing so would've required a gallon of rum and six weeks. I didn't have that kind of patience, or desire to buy that much more rum. Many other drinks used very large quantities of ingredients too - good for parties, not so good for casual trying-out. So, drinks from the turn of the last century seem roughly divided into three categories: fizzy lemon drinks, warm drinks like hot buttered rum, and punch. Most of them started out looking like a good idea, and ended up tasting like flavored lighter fluid. Also, while baking soda may make your lemonade fizz, I cannot state too strongly how bad it will make your drink taste. After too much of this experimentation, I longed for a simple glass of wine - or even whiskey, straight up.½

"How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant's Companion: The Original Cocktail Guide" is a great reprint of the original publication of 1862. The book is partly a historical reference to tastes of the 1800's and a look back at days gone by. While there are coctails and punch recipes that require hard to find ingredients, there are still enough cocktails in this book to keep one busy for a long stretch of evenings sampling different concoctions.

If there is one criticism of this copy, it is disappointment that there is no added index at the back that would allow one to easily locate specific coctails.

But overall, it is a great reprint.

This is the hesperus press edition they sent to early reviewers, so I'm going to talk about their nice clean edition, with a number of useful endnotes.

"Prof" Jerry Thomas is one of the early cocktail bartenders, his most famous creation is the blue blazer, a fantastic bit of bar theatre. The recipes are pretty old fashioned, you won't find a cosmopolitan in here. However if you are interested in mixing drinks there are a few great ideas dotted around.

Hesperus have a nice paperback, with scattered etchings through the text, some useful footnotes (though one for Monongahela whiskey might have been nice) and a handy glossary which converts glass sizes to Fl/oz (though no mention of English or US). Those 2 little niggles aside this is a very affordable print of a cocktail classic, there will definitely be some smashes & Juleps in my garden this summer

575. 1st pub 1927,1928 Alfred A. Knopf, NY. This edition 7th, Post Prohibition edition. HTF dw. Excellent condition. Superb b&w illustrations throughout.