Head Barkeeper’s Drink List 1911 A Window into a Pre-Prohibition Hotel Bar

 

While looking for something to do around the house and not really wanting to do anything, I was sorting books and came across an envelope with a piece of pre-Prohibition mixology ephemera I had purchased on a whim and then forgotten. Thinking it would be better to mount it on an acid free board and mat rather than leaving it in a battered envelope, it became that day’s task, giving me a chance to use some of my left-over supplies from when photography had been a hobby. 

The roughly 11.25”x17.5” poster’s letterhead reads “Mack Latz, Hotel Alamac, Atlantic City, 1911”

 

 In the advertising of the day, the popular Hotel Alamac, in Atlantic City, was “Plumb on the Boardwalk” and claimed to be the only hotel with its own pier. The hotels name came from combining the first names of the couple who owned it, Mack and Allah Latz.  According to a ladies magazine article of the period Allah, Mack’s wife, managed the hotel. Since Mack was regarded as a respected businessman, it seems likely he would have been something equivalent to a CEO.

 Beneath the letterhead, the document is titled “Head Barkeeper’s Drink List” with the admonition “To be posted at back of bar.”  The poster is printed on a lightweight paper, showing its age with small tears, chips and staining.  Intended as an aid for hotel barkeeps, there are short, specific instructions for the preparation and serving of 88 libations listed in alphabetical order.  The drinks are all old standards with the exception of the “Alamac Special,” a drink seemingly absent from bar books I could consult.  A similar drink in cocktail form appears in Meier’s 1936 Artistry of Mixing Drinks as the Maple Leaf.  Today’s Apple Jack Sour is very similar to the original Almanac Special.

 Prices are absent and the print size small, making it unlikely bar patrons would be able to read it.  At the end of the list there are house rules including “Ladies may not stand at the Bar” and that “Drinks must not be given or sold to anyone on the Jag List”.

 While keeping ladies from standing at the bar is amusing, though not surprising considering the era, the “Jag list” is worthy of note. At first, I assumed it was the drunkard equivalent of the unofficial list we kept in the Emergency Room, many pre-politically correct years ago, of drug seeking “frequent flyers.”  Not so, it was much more complicated than that.

According to the American Dictionary and Cyclopedia of 1896,

 “To have a jag on” was slang for “being in a state of partial intoxication: the idea being that when a man is fully intoxicated he has a load, but that when he is only partly intoxicated he has on only a jag.”

By the early 1900’s there are mentions of mayors, judges and others having jag lists of  “those to whom liquor may not be sold.” These were not merely unofficial lists. They were required by laws responding to drunkenness. For example, a New York Times article of 1915, said that East Orange, New Jersey

 “…is going to have a jag list.  Men who are addicted to drink and are constantly giving their families and police trouble, are to have their names pasted up on all licensed liquor places, and the owners and their employees are to be instructed to refuse them drink of any kind.  In the event of their failure to comply with this command they will be subject to a fine.”

 Other jurisdictions went even further by pulling and refusing liquor licenses to establishments that failed to meet “jag list” laws.  In Hazelton, Pennsylvania it was reported that

“Liquor dealers asked that the city furnish them with photographs of those in the habit of “taking a wee drop too much,” on the “jag list” in other words, so that they may recognize them, and help in stopping the practice.”

The house rules in the Head Barkeeper’s Drink List also specify the bars operating hours, which must
have been regulated by Atlantic City codes. It states “Bar doors must be closed at 11:50 Saturday night.  Bar lights out at 12 sharp.  Bar opens Sunday night 12 o’clock for one hour.” That one hour between 2400 and 0100 must certainly have been interesting.

 I have searched for copies of this poster and cannot find any other examples.  Alas, it seems unique, leaving one other question, the date of actual publication. The printing information in the bottom right corner is chipped and reads

 “This list reprinted November 8, 19 (paper missing) by Milton Latz, Knife and Fork Inn, Atlantic and Pacific Aves., Atlantic City, N (paper missing) 25 Cents a Copy.

 
The Knife & Fork Inn, in addition to having been a popular restaurant, had also been a speak-easy during Prohibition. After being raided and its liquor supplies confiscated, it was taken over in 1927 by Milton Latz, Mack Latz’s brother. Since Latz ownership of the inn dates to 1927, this document would appear to be a Prohibition era souvenir tribute to the “Good Old Days” printed in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s.  In any case, it is still a window into a pre-Prohibition hotel bar.

Yes Virginia, There Are Italian Bar Books

Two years ago, several members of my family had the opportunity to return to Italy, visit family, and do the obligatory tourist rounds.  I asked my brother George to see if he could find me a vintage, or any, Italian bar book. After much searching, and asking around, he reported that he had been told there were none and that, in Italy, drinks were not measured.  Neither sounded likely.  To make any drink, as in preparing food, a basic recipe is needed.  The ingredients need to be added in appropriate amounts and mixed in an appropriate manner. While a skilled bartender may not use an actual measuring device, he/she can make an accurate pour through practice.  Since mankind (and womankind) have a compulsion to chronicle any topic of interest, from ardvaarks to zydeco, where were those elusive Italian mixology texts?

Being told there were none, like being told something cannot be done (or shouldn’t be done), is a challenge too good to pass on.  I set out to find a trophy for my collection and, in twenty-four hours, there were two being shipped from Italy despite outrageous shipping charges.

Those of you who grew up post-internet do not fully realize how easy life has become. Back in the 60's, when I was studying geology,  doing research meant spending endless hours in a dull  library, without coffee or beer, poring over index card files.  Then, with a fistful of notes,  roaming the stacks looking for texts that were often not there, or did not have the hoped for information.  After exhausting the local university library, you would travel to another seeking the elusive grains of gold for your research paper. Today, you can sit with your electronic device of choice, in your skivvies with a cup of joe, browse the contents of libraries around the world, then request the titles at your local library. Damn young whipper-snappers just don't know when they have it good!

Trying the easy way first, searching eBay, over my morning coffee, was a bust.   There were several rather dull looking Italian pieces from the 1980's or newer, nothing I felt worth the effort to order or work with.  Not all was lost though.  I found a bargain priced, odd little 70’s drink book from Venezuela entitled Tragos Magicos.

Deciding the bigger gun of a serious resource was in order, I went to my favorite online used bookseller, AbeBooks, and the hunt was on.  Hunting a book online when you do not have a title, author or publisher, is a matter of utilizing key words.  What key words would you use in searching for a mixology text in a foreign language? Think about it.

 I once worked with a physician who was an excellent diagnostician.  Like

Dr. House of TV fame, he could diagnose unusual illnesses with minimal information, later to be proven correct in testing. A favorite saying of his was "Common things are common."  In other words, you need to rule out the ordinary before you move to the exotic. 

While there are many words related to imbibing, sometimes the obvious are the best. The word I use is "cocktail" in its various translations.  Though the term limits you to books from the late 1800's forward and will totally miss specialty books dedicated to punches or other esoterica (for example, the German text Bowlen und Punche), it is a great starting point.  The down-side to key word searches is that you may end up with hundreds of titles to peruse, many of which are totally unrelated to what you seek.  Italian drink books of quality do seem to be as scarce as hens teeth.  I successfully located two, i cocktails and Il Barman e i Suoi Cocktails. Both are well worth having and the former is todays topic.

When it comes to enjoyable books, some are a pleasure to read, others a pleasure to look at.  i cocktails is a blend of both.  Written by Luigi Veronelli, published in 1963, i cocktails is a hefty 365 pages including the index. The recipes include the old, as the Bee's Knees, and the obscure like the Zakusky and Monachino.  Perusing the index of recipes, one is led to believe that i cocktail is an amalgam of drinks from around the world. If you enjoy gin as I do, there are over 200 recipes calling for it.

For the visual individual, the book is a cornucopia of liqour labels. These labels are not the usual color photos as found in so many publications. In i cocktails there is page after page of heavy paper with individual labels neatly mounted, usually two to the page.  The lables represent products from around the world.  Very Old Fitzgerald - Barrelled in 1955 bottled in 1963, Cederlund Schwedenpunsch, Drioli Marachino and Tequila Sauza are but a few.  I am inclined to think the labels genuine since the Sauza label has printing on the back that would only be seen from the opposite side of the bottle.

The author uses  a pictorial key with each recipe that indicates the number of servings (usually two), the type of  glass in which to serve, how to mix (mixing glass or shaker), and if the drink is short, long, or hot.  

Units of  measure are always a challenge to translate.  Sure, a gocce (drop) in Italy, is susceptible to the same laws of physics as a  drop in the New Mexico desert, but when we get to bicchiere and bicchierino, glass and small glass, we have work to do.

In a recipe where all the units of measure for liquor are identical, all bicchiere or all bicchierino, the recipe is easily converted into a ratio.  When we combine dis-similar units, we need to know what each unit’s volume is. The chart below will help in translating volumes of measure in Italian cocktail books. Unfortunately, Italian measures seem to have as many differences in definition as Italy has had governments since World War II, so the selection shown is the product of multiple sources.

Having completed the laborious task of converting measures, we may now attempt the pleasurable task of  mixing a unique drink from an allegedly non-existent book.

Being an enthusiast of both gin and Campari, I was pleased to find yet another  cocktail using both. If you enjoy an occasional Americano or Negroni, you will probably enjoy the "Gin On Top" cocktail.  Served in a chilled cocktail glass it is an excellent aperitif.  Having the peculiar moniker of "Gin On Top" would lead you to believe it is a layered drink, but this is not so.  It is a conventionally prepared, stirred not shaken, cocktail.  In real life, I prefer shaken cocktails as I like mine colder  than the proverbial witches' breast in a brass brassiere.  The introduction of air causing a cloudy  drink, and hence "bruising" it, is of little importance to me. For me, there is no discernible difference in taste. Neanderthal that I am, I also do not raise my pinkie when I drink tea, or other beverages,  unlike a well-bred  Canadian I once worked with in Etobicoke (who disliked me for being "loud", and I him for being prissy) -- but that is another story.

Without further adieu, here is the Gin On Top:

This drink is distinctly on the bitter side. I find it best served with cheeses, crackers, or other hors d ovres  of your choosing. This recipe for two, would work well in three smaller, old school cocktail glasses.

Gin On Top (for two)

150 ml dry gin

25 ml Campari

25 ml lemon juice (1/2 lemon) filtered to remove pulp

2 wild strawberries

Ice cubes.

Place ice in mixing glass. Pour in the lemon juice, dry gin and Campari. Stir briskly with bar spoon, leave one or two seconds, then stir again slowly. Serve immediately in chilled cocktail glass garnished with a wild strawberry (in the New Mexico desert, you will get powerful thirsty looking for a wild strawberry)

What’s In A Name - Or, why I think you should add 3 Bottle Bar to your collection

In my last blog, I mentioned a book by H.i. Williams, 3 Bottle Bar.

Let me begin by saying that I have always had a fascination with oddities in names - quirks in the spelling, why people have the names they have, or where names originated.

Thirty years ago, I met a woman, now long passed, named Voltarine. She spelled her name as I have written it.  Not having encountered that name previously, I asked her if the name had a family history.  Those of you well read, and interested in feminist studies, are probably thinking “She must have been named after Voltairine de Cleyre, feminist writer and orator, and her parents misspelled her name.”  Not so.  Voltarine explained that her parents were enthusiasts of Voltaire and thought that Voltarine would be the feminine derivative of his name.

I am terrible with names, even those of people I know well.  At the store a few weeks ago I ran into a nurse that I had recently worked with for five years. I repeatedly called her “Kathy” (the name of an RN I hadn’t worked with in 15 years) instead of Marianne. She did not correct me and it didn’t dawn on me until I had gotten home. I still remember Voltarine Williams’ full name, because of her little story, though we met but twice.

On another occasion, when employed as lead nurse in a pediatric clinic, I was attending to a mother whose sons were named Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael. When I asked if she liked Italian art, she gave me a puzzled look.  I then explained that I was curious about the names of her sons.  As you have probably guessed, she had named them after the Ninja Turtles.

In the hospital, and clinics, where a large part of the patient population spoke only Spanish, I made my name a private pun.  Some Spanish speakers have difficulty with the name “Charles.”  Knowing this, and since I conversed with these patients in passable medical Spanish, I would introduce myself as Carlos Madera – a literal translation of my given name.  For a time, it caused some confusion among co-workers when I was asked for by that name.

Back to the book and the name of interest.  The first thing I noticed about 3 Bottle Bar was the curious spelling of the authors name on the fly leaf.  Initials capital “H.” lower case “i.” Surely there had to be a story.  I was correct.  H.i. Williams was born Harney Isham Williams in Ladoga, Indiana, 1886.  In his youth, his friends took to calling him “Hi.”  This name stuck and he used it throughout his life in both a personal, and professional, capacity.  “Hi” is certainly an easier handle to remember than “Harney” or “Isham” and conveys a friendly nature.

His book, 3 Bottle Bar - Hospitality Poured From 3 Bottles, published in 1943, is a rather thin book on mixology. A mere 64 pages, with 26 personally created recipes. You might overlook it as a potential addition to your collection.  The drinks aren’t bad and it is an easy to find out-of-print book, on eBay or Amazon, for less than $15 in hardback.

In 3 Bottle Bar, Hi talks about only needing three bottles of liquor to make most drinks requested by guests - whiskey, gin, and dry white wine (which he substitutes for vermouth). In the section entitled Afterthoughts, he relents and says that it would be OK to expand to a 5 bottle bar, adding rum and scotch if desired.  In the course of his book, like most other authors of the genre, he offers suggestions on how to best prepare a drink, requirements for a bar, and related trivia.  I like his less than elitist attitude regarding liquors.  Discussing “whiskey,” he does not mean bourbon or rye. He suggests using whichever whiskey you enjoy.

You may be thinking, “Meh, doesn’t sound like much to bother with.”  There is more. 

A large part of the pleasure of using a vintage drink book, or a favorite cookbook, is that the handful of paper is a tangible link in a chain to the the past.  A link not only to those who used that book, but to the author who wrote it.  While H.i. Williams appears to be merely the writer of a mildly entertaining bar book, he was so much more. To quote the foreward to 3 Bottle Bar:

In earlier years, he relied on drawing as his medium, and he did well with it; painting followed, and he did well with it, too. Currently photography is his choice, and his colorful compositions, which are reproduced in millions of magazines each month, have identified H.i. Williams as one of the foremost photographers in America.

H.i. Williams career spanned 50 years.  He was renown for his contribution to the “food as fashion” movement of the 1930’s. This influenced advertising art as we know it today. He was much sought after for his ability to create engaging, brightly colored commercial photographs of food.

A graduate of the Cincinnati Academy of Art, he earned reputation as a sculptor and artist.  In 1919, he moved on to New York and became a commercial photograper in the 1920s.  Williams shot iconic compositions for many companies including Fiestaware and Fleishmanns Yeast. Pillsbury used his images in their advertising and on cake mix boxes. Examples of his work are in many homes today.  If you look, you may have some, too.

  

Prior to the 1930s, images in cookbooks were hand drawn, sometimes hand colored, but more often, lifeless black and white photos.

Do you remember your mothers, or grandmothers, cookbooks of the 1930s, 40s and 50s?  Sprinkled with pages of brightly colored, full bleed images, of food perfectly prepared, appearing as it should when served at the family table?  These were added to give the cookbooks a bit of dash and appeal to homemakers.  Much of that color imagery was provided by “H.i.” or his disciples.

Williams was a perfectionist. He had a test kitchen with a staff that included professional cooks and bakers. Meats and fish were professionally cut so that the end product would look flawless. One anecdote alleges he would have his staff go through 20 boxes of crackers to find those that were “pristine.”

Creating his compositions was time consuming.  He would first meticulously arrange the layout, when it was completed to his satisfaction, he would discard and replace anything that was damaged or had lost its’ look of freshness.  Only then would he photograph the result.

I have a friend, Mark, who likes to say, regarding selling, that “it is the sizzle that sells the bacon.”  Well, H.i. Williams put the sizzle in food advertising and cookbooks. For this, he was recognized world-wide, and virtually every professional photography magazine of the 1940’s and 1950’s featured interviews as well as articles about his work and techniques.

The photographic process Williams favored to make food appear life-like is known as the trichrome carbro.  Carbro is short for carbon and bromide. The trichrome carbro is very time intensive. Taking 80, or more, steps, it is said that a person working a 40 hour week could complete about twelve of these photographs.

The trichrome carbro process requires three negatives taken utilizing red, green, and blue filters.  These negatives are then transferred to pigmented gelatin sheets which when developed, are then layered. Registration has to be perfect to achieve the final color image.  While this is a very quick and dirty explanation, the results are impressive. There are many articles online that explain the process more completely.

3 Bottle Bar, is a book by a creative genius of the advertising age whose influence is wide spread. As a link to a bit of modern history, the text is an item of drink related arcana worthy of your attention.

From 3 Bottle Bar, the drink of the day is the Carbro. A drink by  H.i. Williams, with a name of his choosing that we can now understand and appreciate.