THE RISE AND CONQUEST OF THE COCKTAIL

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 134, 8 June 1935, Page 25

THE RISE AND CONQUEST OF THE COCKTAIL

One of the odd developments of the American iiiirteen-year "drought" was the increasing popularity of the cocktail habit; the mixing of this potent dnnk was always a favourite topic of conversation, writes John W. Harrington in the "New York Times." Today, with foreign lands and our own distilleries contributing more and more varieties of liquors to its concocting the mixing of cocktails is becoming more of an art.than ever before. And the cocktail party, which usually begins late in the afternoon and lasts for a few hours at least, is now an established institution.

Manners, customs, and costumes, morals and social usages, industry in the more precious metals, even furniture and interior decoration have been influenced by the spread of the cocktail vogue. The potation is, in more senses than one, the glass of fashion. Thus its past, present, and future are taken into consideration by economists and publicists. Tradition traces the cocktail to Mexico. It is said that an Aztec chief, on receiving a delectable, stimulating drink, named it a "xoctl," after the maid who brought it to him. An incredible legend this, as the New World had no distilled liquors until the white man brought his firewater. One might as reasonably attribute the cocktail to the lost Atlantis. >

Washington Irving refers to a colourful gin drink of the early Dutch settlers of New York, which had the iridescence of the rear plumage of roosters—hence, some people say, the name "cocktail." Another legend is that the cocktail was first offered "well shaken before taking" at the Waysida Inn at Scarsdale, N.Y. The mixer was Betsy Flanagan. According to this legend also the various hues of the liquors used were responsible for the name.

Whatever its origin, the cocktail has been recognised everywhere as an early American work, and its creation has enlisted the highest talent. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his novel "The,

Blithedaie Romance" (1852), makes honourable mention of a man as "being famous for nothing but gin cocktails and commanding a fair salary for that one accomplishment."

An attempt to take from this country the credit of inventing the appe tiser has been made on behalf of England. It is based on certain passages in the Thackeray novels describing the adventures of one Arthur Pendennis. Harry Foker is advised to take "some cocktail." Thackeray's knowledge of the American drink was only literary, and he probably never tasted a cocktail until 1852, when he was in the United States on his first lecture tour.

■ An honest mistake may have been made by those who have heard that certain palate-provoking elixirs were first compounded at the Pendennis Club, named in honour of the Thackeray hero. That club, however, was not in London, but in Louisville, Kentucky, and was famed for its mint juleps. Cocktails, however, were drunk in the United States long before the Pendennis was founded, and were en joyed in New England and New York in various guises. They were served thoroughly iced.

The geniuses of the American drinking bar have evolved a thousand cocktails of varied flavours and picturesque names. Albert S. Crockett, historian of the old Waldorf-Astoria, gives tha recipes of more than 300 served at that hotel alone. New plays, news events, sports, popular songs, have inspired their titles.

The "cocktail hour" not only whets the appetite for food, but also satisfies it. One need never leave it hungry. With the many drinks are eaten delicate gastronomic bits —cavair, anchovies, rare cheeses, red salmon roe, crisp crackers and biscuits; constant processions of tempting canapes and hors d'oeuvres passed on trays, in seemingly undiminished numbers. The cocktail hour has qualified as a social institution.