 First edition, published in 1935 | |
| Original title | Old Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Bartending |
Publication date | 1935 (first edition) |
| Media type | |
| 641.874 | |
| Website | mrbostondrinks |
Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide is a cocktail recipe book and bartending manual first published in 1935. The guide was once used on nearly every bar shelf in the United States. [1] About 11 million copies were printed in 68 editions, as of 2015.
Before the internet, the book helped play a role in bars across the United States in the creation of unfamiliar cocktails; bartenders would look up recipes in a printed bartender's guide, oftentimes the Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide, and not know anything beyond that recipe. [2] [1] In the modern day, bartenders can find a plethora of recipes, the drink's history, who is known for drinking it, and other details, helping spur the cocktail renaissance. [2]
The book serves as a historical document – it featured popular new recipes in each edition, making each book represent what the public was drinking at the time. [1]
About 11 million copies have been printed in 68 editions, as of 2015. [1]
The book is recognizable for maintaining its branding across the decades, including a cherry-red cover, a small size, and a logo of "Old Mr. Boston", a man with a top hat and muttonchops, with an easy-going grin and stout stature. [1]
The Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide was first published by the Ben-Burk Inc., owners and operators of a distillery producing Mr. Boston-branded liquors. The company was founded in 1927, during Prohibition, and began distilling in 1933, around the time of Prohibition's repeal. [1] [3]
The book was first published with 120 recipes, including for "cocktails, fizzes, punches, highballs, toddies, and long drinks." The book sold for 50 U.S. cents. The book became one of many cocktail guides released as early as the 1940s, though its marketing helped it thrive: signature elements including its logo, red cover, and size. The book was edited by Leo Cotton from 1935 until his retirement in 1970, spanning 49 editions. Cotton made sure the book was up-to-date with modern recipes. [1]
Coinciding with Cotton's retirement, the bar industry began to decline into a "dark age". The book remained to be published, though it included low-brow drinks such as the Fuzzy Navel and the Slippery Nipple. [4] In the late 1990s, the cocktail renaissance took place, and bars began to reconsider techniques and recipe creations. The book was then updated, the "Old" was dropped from the book's name, and the company hired notable bartenders to improve the work. These included Jim Meehan, co-founder of Please Don't Tell, Jonathan Pogash, and wine and spirits writer Anthony Giglio. These writers added hundreds of new recipes, expanded the introduction, and redid the chapter sections. By 2015, the latest guide had 336 pages, up from 150 in 1963 and 40 in the 1935 original. [1]
In 2012, an anniversary edition was published by John Wiley & Sons. [1]
In July 2016, Mr. Boston launched its new website, mrbostondrinks.com, where thirteen of the Official Bartender's Guides are available in digital form. [5] [6] It contains about 1,500 cocktail recipes. [7]
The Mr. Boston guides remain recommended into 2019; a writer for The Kitchn advised using a modern copy for reference in home bars, and older editions to rediscover forgotten cocktails. [8]
A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink. Most commonly, cocktails are either a single spirit or a combination of spirits, mixed with other ingredients such as juices, flavored syrups, tonic water, shrubs, and bitters. Cocktails vary widely across regions of the world, and many websites publish both original recipes and their own interpretations of older and more famous cocktails.
The old fashioned is a cocktail made by muddling sugar with bitters and water, adding whiskey, and garnishing with an orange slice or zest and a cocktail cherry. It is traditionally served with ice in an old fashioned glass.
The Tom Collins is a Collins cocktail made from gin, lemon juice, sugar, and carbonated water. First memorialized in writing in 1876 by Jerry Thomas, "the father of American mixology", this "gin and sparkling lemonade" drink is typically served in a Collins glass over ice. A non-alcoholic "Collins mix" mixer is produced, enjoyed by some as a soft drink.
The Long Island iced tea, or Long Island ice tea, is an IBA official cocktail, typically made with vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, and a splash of cola. Despite its name, the cocktail does not typically contain iced tea, but is named for having the same amber hue as iced tea.
The Museum of the American Cocktail, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to education in mixology and preserving the rich history of the cocktail as developed in the United States. Among its events are tastings in association with specific seminars or exhibits. It annually presents the American Cocktail Awards, together with the United States Bartenders Guild.
The brandy daisy is a cocktail which first gained popularity in the late 19th century. One of the earliest known recipes was published in 1876 in the second edition of Jerry Thomas's The Bartenders Guide or How To Mix Drinks: The Bon-Vivants Companion:
Fill glass one-third full of shaved ice. Shake well, strain into a large cocktail glass, and fill up with Seltzer water from a syphon.
The Ward 8 or Ward Eight is a cocktail originating in 1898 in Boston, Massachusetts, at the bar of the Gilded Age restaurant Locke-Ober.
Mr. Boston, previously Old Mr. Boston, was a distillery located at 1010 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1933 to 1986. It produced its own label of gin, bourbon, rum, and brandies, as well as a few cordials and liqueurs.
Dale DeGroff, also known as "the King of Cocktails" or "King Cocktail", is an American bartender and author. The New York Times in 2015 called DeGroff "one of the world's foremost cocktail experts", and wrote that his book The Craft of the Cocktail is considered an essential bartending reference. From 1987 to 1999 DeGroff rose to prominence as the original chief bartender in the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center in New York City, where his then-unusual emphasis on classic cocktail recipes and high-quality ingredients led to substantial acclaim and emulation by many other bars in New York City and beyond, and helped influence the creation of the craft cocktail movement.
A rum swizzle is a rum-based cocktail often called "Bermuda's national drink". The Royal Gazette has referred to it as "the legendary Sam swizzle...perfect for sharing and irresistible to locals and tourists alike". In addition to providing the "swizzle" portion of the 1933 swizzle stick product name, it has been said that this potent cocktail is "as much a part of Bermuda Island culture and cuisine as is the Bermuda onion, the vibrant hibiscus, or the graceful Bermuda Longtail."
The last word is a gin-based Prohibition-era cocktail originally developed at the Detroit Athletic Club. While the drink eventually fell out of favor, it enjoyed a renewed popularity after being rediscovered by the bartender Murray Stenson in 2003 during his tenure at the Zig Zag Café and becoming a cult hit in the Seattle area.
A Clover Club cocktail is a shaken cocktail consisting of gin, lemon juice, raspberry syrup, and egg white. The egg white acts as an emulsifier, forming the drink's characteristic foamy head.
The Cafe Royal Cocktail Book is a collection of cocktail recipes compiled by William J. Tarling, published by the United Kingdom Bartenders Guild in 1937. It contains a number of pioneering recipes, including the 20th Century and what later became the Margarita.
Jeff "Beachbum" Berry is an American restaurant owner, author, and historian of tiki culture, particularly the drinks associated with the tiki theme. In addition to researching and reconstructing lost recipes, he has invented and published his own cocktail recipes.
The Martinez is a classic cocktail that is widely regarded as the direct precursor to the Martini. It serves as the basis for many modern cocktails, and several different versions of the original exist. These are generally distinguished by the accompaniment of either Maraschino or Curacao, as well as differences in gin or bitters.
Imbibe! is a book by cocktail historian David Wondrich. It was first published in November 2007 by Perigee Books.
Audrey Saunders is an American bartender, considered one of the world's most famous bartenders.
Zig Zag Café is a craft cocktail bar and restaurant in Seattle, Washington. Established in 1999, the bar is considered one of the best in the United States, helping lead the craft cocktail movement. From 2002 to 2011, noted bartender Murray Stenson worked at Zig Zag Café, and created innovative cocktails as well as reintroduced the pre-Prohibition-era Last Word cocktail to the public and to bars around the world.
The craft cocktail movement is a social movement spurred by the cocktail renaissance, a period of time in the 21st century characterized by a revival and re-prioritization of traditional recipes and methods in the bar industry, especially in the United States. The renaissance spanned from 2004 into the late 2010s. By 2017, high-quality ingredients, techniques, and liquors began to be ubiquitous in bars across the United States, leading writers to declare the renaissance over.
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