Whipped Cream Difficulties

One of the things I’ve noticed in my reading of cocktail history is the emphasis on “punch” during the 18th and 19th centuries. Historically, it seems that the communal drink served in a large bowl was much, much more popular during that time period, and then abruptly dropped off – probably, like many other aspects of 18th and 19th century cocktail culture, killed off by Prohibition.

Frank Bruni, in “The Tipsy Diaries” from today’s NYT, has a nifty profile of David Wondrich, the guy who wrote Imbibe! (a “biography”, for want of a better word, of the legendary early mixologist Jerry Thomas). Wondrich has a new book coming out: Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl, and Bruni’s piece ties into that.

There’s a couple of things in the Bruni article that I find interesting. One is that you can apparently still purchase ambergris (I love the description of it as “clotted whale cholesterol”). I was also delighted to read that Wonderich became interested in mixology after reading Barnaby Conrad’s Absinthe: History in a Bottle, which was also one of the books that got me interested in cocktail culture.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 15th, 2010 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Books, Clippings, Mixology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.