1929 The Bon Vivant's Companion or How to Mix Drinks by Jerry Thomas

THE BON VIVANT'S COMPANION

and Jerry was an English drink,and that Professor Thomas merely chanced to be the first bartender of importance to prepare it in America. This impression probably grew out of the fact that after 1821, when Pierce Egan published his famous novel, Lije in London,or Days and Nights ojJerry Hawthorne and His Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom, the lower class of London public house became known as Tom and Jerry. Egan's volume, incidentally, was one of Thack eray's early favorites, and some critics believe that a sequel, devoted largely to country sports and adventures, suggested Dickens's Pickwick Papers. Concoctions of hot rum,but un- spiced, had been favorite tipples in the English barrooms for many years, and for that matter in America as well, but I have been unable to find authority for the belief that any beverage was specifically entitled Tom and Jerry until Pro fessor Thomas introduced his mixture into St. Louis and subsequently throughout the land. Moreover, the Professor first called his invention the Copenhagen, perhaps wishing to acknowledge his indebtedness, so far as concerned the basic idea, to a rum-and-egg drink then in vogue in the capital of Denmark. But the patriotic Missourians refused to accept a foreign name for such a delectable drink, and it soon became known simply as Jerry Thomas. It was not called Tom and Jerry until Professor Thomas brought the secret to the Atlantic Coast. The name,in this connection, is obviously a contraction of Professor Thomas's Christian and surnames. With the invention of this prince of cold weather drinks and the introduction of the Blue Blazer into the Missouri metropolis. Professor Thomas concluded though mis takenly— that he had civilized St. Louis and taken the curse off the hard mid-western winter. So he surrendered his post as Principal Bartender at the Planters'House,and amid the mournful wailing of the citizenry embarked upon a flat- bottomed stem-wheeler which, in time, landed him at New xxxii