1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

PREAMBULARY 5 in memory mostly as a series of dashes from a table to the bar of "Dirty Dick's," in Nassau. It came to be said that a ship's company in those days did not disembark upon arriving back in New York, but was poured out upon the pier. When the repeal of the prohibition amendment was accomplished, on December 5, 1933, proprietors of New • York hotels and restaurants made the discovery that good bartenders, men who knew anything at all about mixing cocktails, were' scarce. Most of the old-timers had died off, or forgotten what they had known. Steamships and clubs were raided; barmen were even imported; but it is a good hazard thatp ut of every ten men employed to mix cocktails on that historic day of Repeal, not more than one really knew the rudiments of his trade. Schools for bar– tenders had sprung up, but they could not turn out ex– perts fast enough to qualify. Properly mixing a wide variety of cocktails requires much more than a month of training. Long practice is absolutely essential. Besides, even in pre-prohibition days, no one man could keep all the drink recipes in his head. Few latter-day cock– tail slingers really have any conception of the number and variety of cocktails and other mixed drinks that used to be in demand. In order to be able to serve the correct cock– tail when a customer called for his fancy of the moment, recipes had been written down and · kept ready for con– sultation. During the last few years, the market has been flooded with so-called cocktail recipe books. Without challenging them all, one may mention that some seem to have been based on the p·ractices and even on the orthography of speakeasy "bar-keeps." In one, for example, I came across