1937 Café Royal Cocktail Book Coronation Edition

and was brought to England in 1859 by the famous Jerry Thomas, who visited London, Southampton and Liverpool exhibiting his art with the aid of a solid silver set of bar utensils valued at £1,000. Although something of a showman, Jerry Thomas invented many new, and, in the case of his " Blue Blazer," startling drinks with which he astounded the staid beer and wine drinkers of England. Although this tour was financially successful, he was prudent enough to make it a brief novelty and soon returned to America. In 1862 " The Bartenders 5 Guide " was written by Jerry Thomas, who described himself as being formerly of the Metropolitan Hotel, New York, and the Planters' House, St. Louis. He gave ten recipes for cocktails, and of the cocktail he wrote: The cocktail is a modern invention, and is generally used on fishing and other sporting parties, although some patients insist that it is good in the morning as a tonic. With the exception of the " Bottle Cocktail," all his recipes call for the use of ice, so the " fishing and sporting parties " must have been on an elaborate scale. That the cocktail had taken firm root in America is proved by a paper called " Under the Gaslight " in 1879, which notes: " In the morning the merchant, the lawyer, or the Methodist deacon takes his cocktail. Suppose it is not properly compounded ? The whole day's proceedings go crooked because the man himself feels wrong from the effects of an unskilfully mixed drink." The first real American bar to be opened in London was at the Criterion Restaurant about 1878, with Leo Engel as bartender. Both the bar and the bartender were imported from America, and some wit of the times remarked that, " although the carved eagles, that adorned the bar, all sat up above, they had their human prototype working unceasingly below."