Imbibe! (36 page)

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
Other recipes call for two parts or even one part cognac (and don’t skimp on the quality!) to one part liqueur. This way’s better. In any case, the only crème de menthe to use for a top-flight Stinger is the French “Get” brand; well worth tracking down. And whatever you use, it must always be white, not green. Report has it that Reggie liked a dash of absinthe in his. He would, wouldn’t he?

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
Even though it has only spirits in it, this drink is always shaken. That bolsters the Vanderbilt story: If you were a millionaire making drinks for show behind your replica Norman bar in your Fifth Avenue mansion, wouldn’t you want to shake them? As for the glass: Use a Cocktail glass, on the small side.

For someone who has been dead for 120 years, Jerry Thomas is doing pretty well. His book is in print, his name flits through the mouths of men, his drinks are mixed and dissected and even enjoyed. In contemporary cocktail culture, he is frequently evoked as an arbiter and a benchmark, one of the (pathetically few) authorities every serious drink-mixer has to know.

But the Professor’s work is more than a point of academic reference; it also serves as a source of inspiration, a jumping-off point in the creation of new drinks. And rather than merely asserting this, I can prove it. When assembling this book, I asked a bar full of the world’s best mixologists if they would be kind enough to contribute any original recipes they might have that were inspired in some way by Jerry Thomas and his drinks. Their responses, which you will find below, should put to rest any thoughts that the Professor’s work is a mere historical curiosity.

Not that they all agree exactly how his legacy should be used; like all artists, mixologists are a diverse-thinking bunch. Between them, they manage to box the compass of inspiration, so to speak, from taking one of his recipes, brushing off its shoulders, straightening its seams, and sending it on out there, to filling in the blanks in one of his categories (even some blanks he would never have thought existed, like the one in the Sour category that calls out for horseradish), to bringing different classes together, to . . . well, to the Regans. The incorrigible Regans. The thing about Gary and Mardee, they just won’t—can’t—follow the rules, color between the lines, stay on the reservation. You ask them for a drink inspired by Jerry Thomas and they send you something sweet and dangerous that (almost) swipes the name of a highly toxic Australian gold-miner’s drink employing controlled substances (it’s not the rum, not the cayenne, but the opium you’ve got to watch out for) and claim that somehow it fits with Thomas’s life and character. And, come to think of it, somehow it does. So they get off the hook—this time.

The only way I can justify insinuating a drink of my own in this august company is because it uses one final way of honoring the master, which is robbing him blind. The alert—or even not-so-alert—reader will immediately recognize my so-called Tombstone Cocktail as nothing more than a plain old Whiskey Cocktail, fitted out with new identity papers. But I will plead in my own defense that it nonetheless deserves a name of its own. Not because of any slight originality in conception or execution (the only way it differs from the Professor’s drink is in its use of Demerara sugar syrup instead of white), but because of the occasion its name commemorates: It was first served on October 3, 2004, when a group of New York writers and bartenders—including Audrey Saunders, Julie Reiner, Toby Cecchini, Del Pedro, and John Hodgman—accompanied me to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx to help me look for Thomas’s grave. Upon finding it we broke out the enormous shaker we had brought with us, unpacked the freezer bag full of ice and the Cocktail glasses (no plastic for the Professor), assembled this Cocktail, passed the shaker around so we all had a jiggle, and had a drink with the Professor.

I’ll close this discussion with some of the words Eben Klemm and Francesco Lafraconi sent in along with their recipes. Mr. Klemm, I believe, correctly assesses the continued relevance of Jerry Thomas and his great contemporaries to the modern art of mixing drinks mixographer when he notes that

 

But the Professor’s legacy extends beyond the nuts and bolts of combining liquors, sugars, and acids. As Mr. Lafranconi notes, “although he was an incredibly committed and creative individual behind the bar, full of ingenuity and know-how, his personality wasn’t only related to mixing drinks; he also had that savoir-faire; that elegance and class behind the bar. Above all, he was a man of trust. God bless JT!” I heartily concur.

In a saucepan over medium heat, stir ¼ liter rosehip jam into
¼
liter Campari until it dissolves. Bring to 60 degrees Celsius, to a light simmer at most.