1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book

PREAMBULARY 7 recipes were written down once they had been invented and tasted. Every new recipe brought to the bar must pass a try-out before it was inscribed in the Bar Book. It is to the fact that one of the Old Waldorf barmen held on to the copy of that Bar Book long after prohibition had shut what had grown by repute to the dignity of an Amer– ican institution that we owe the preservation of the names and the real recipes of the authentic cocktails and most of the recognized mixed alcoholic drinks of ante-prohibition days. That barman was Joseph Taylor, who had been "called to the Bar" duri~g its early days and who helped close it. He remained in the employ of the Old Waldorf– Astoria until its la~'t day, working in what became known as its "beverage department" and handling no more stimu– lating potations than aerated water, ginger ale and near– beer. After the old hotel was closed, in 1929, Taylor was out of a job for a time, finally obtaining precarious em– ployment until the opening of the new Waldorf. His self-respect would not permit him to work in a speak– easy, he told me. He used to call upon me at intervals. The last time was about ten months before Repeal Day. He was then looking forward eagerly, he said, to the re– turn of old times, and to getting back behind a counter and plying the cocktail shaker in the old way, with "real stuff" to pour into it from genuinely labeled bottles. But he did not live to see that day. · The Old Waldorf Bar Book he had given me to use as I saw fit when I was writing the history of .the Old Waldorf Bar-which I had known from shortly after its opening until the end-and in it I incorporated the con– tents of the recipe book. That book was intended simply as a contribution to the social history of an age-one I