1938 Famous New Orleans Drinks and how to mix'em (3rd printing) by Stanley Clisby Arthur

The Birth of the Cocktail

The most popular alcoholic beverage in the world to day is that high-powered mixture known as the Cocktail. For a century and beyond this stimulating drink has served to elevate dejected spirits. Born, nurtured, and christened on this side of the Atlantic, it has overflowed its original boundaries, especially since the World War, and today even staid British taste, long wedded to his toric brandy and soda, is beginning to find satisfaction —and something else—in the Yankee mixed drink. Why is a cocktail called a cocktail.? Why should the rear adornment of a chanticleer be identified with so robust a libation? The origin of the cocktail and its singular naming have long been veiled in mystery. One legend sets forth that the French-speaking people of Old New Orleans had a word for a favorite drink, and that word event ually was corrupted into "cocktail." Other and more fanciful legends have found circulation from time to time but here are the facts concerning the birth of the cocktail and how it received its inapposite name. In the year 1793, at the time of the uprising of the blacks on the portion of the island of San Domingo then belonging to France, wealthy white plantation owners were forced to flee that favored spot in the sun-lit Carib bean. With them went their precious belongings and heirlooms. Some of the expelled Dominguois who flocked to what was then Spanish Louisiana brought gold to New Orleans. Others brought slaves along with their household goods. Some brought nothing but the clothes they wore upon their backs. One refugee suc-

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