Eat, Drink and Be Merry!
SOCIETY—there’s luck! These cocktails are your own. Consequently they are of the best. In the group you will recognize many of your friends’ old favorites and many new and stimulating concoctions. The book has grown out of your need for just such an aid to entertainment. The editor of About Town started it with a single cocktail recipe in the Christmas number. And what a “wow” was in that cocktail! Immediately there came requests for more cocktails which led to questions regarding drinks and midnight supper dishes. So the editor gathered her wits and requests together and broadcast for help. Friends and readers of About Town came to the rescue, favorite recipes poured in, were shaken into type, were well mixed and are yours in this container.
It’s up to you to get the kick!
Joe Fitchett, bar steward of the Vancouver Club, whose reputation as a mixer of drinks is nationwide, has not only been kind enough to check every single recipe for us but has added many of his own special and excellent cocktails. For which we are truly thankful, and so you will be when you taste them.
We are also very grateful to Antoine Bernhart, chef of the Hotel Vancouver, for his generous assistance and his many delicious midnight supper contributions.
The Origin of the Cocktail
AND just as we were going to press someone asked us about the origin of cocktails. So we scurried about and this is what we learned:
A little more than a hundred years ago the squire of a little country inn in America lost his beautiful prize fighting-cock. He loved that cock as he loved nothing else on earth except his daughter, and he offered her hand in marriage to the man who would bring back his bird unharmed. Many weeks passed and then one morning a young army officer rode up to the inn with the cock under his arm—not even a single feather missing from its magnificent tail.
The squire, overjoyed, called for drinks that all might toast the tail of the cock, and the daughter, excited at sight of her future husband, mixed whisky and vermouth together by mistake. Everyone liked the concoction and it was christened “Cocktail.” The officer later introduced it to his fellow officers. It became famous in the American army and finally its fame spread all over the world.
Selections from the book “About Town Cocktail Book by Joe Fitchett. Mitchell Printing & Publishing Co. Ltd, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, 1925”
