1933 The Bon Vivant's Companion by George A Zabriskie

WHERE COCKTAILS CAME FROM

A.

.Frenchman, Dr. Tardieu, declares that in the course of certain scientific investigations he discovered that cock tails, generally considered of American origin, are really the ancient French coc^uetele, popular for several centuries in regions of Bordeaux. Dr. Tardieu will be expeded by Americans to produce evidence profoundly convincing. No mere ipse dixit will suffice. It is not the first time that foreigners have impugned the American beginnings of the cocktail. Robert Keable declared that the mixings were invented by the court physician of the festive Roman Emperor Commodus. None will deny that Commodus would have drunk cocktails if he had 'em, but Mr. Keable's statement is not supported by Gibbon or any other dig nified authority. The most persistent American tradition regarding the cocktail fixes its birth in 1779 in Betsy Flanagan's Inn on the road between Tarrytown and White Plains, where American soldiers with gin, and French soldiers with ver mouth, blended these beverages in token of brotherhood, stirring the resultant mess with the tail feathers of Mrs.