1967 Cocktails and Mixed Drinks by Charles A Tuck

Foreword

Many more people are now in a position to provide mixed drinks or cocktails for their friends. It is one of the signs of the more prosperous timesin which welive. This book tells you how to prepare a very widerangeofdrinks, including many ofthe established favourites as well as a number ofmy own invention. I am quite certain that many readers will soon begin inventing their own drinks once they have studied the general technique. There is no mystery about the business! In fact, it is lai-gely a question ofdiscovering for yourselfwhatfascinating combinations ofingredients can be made.You will probably devise a particular concoction which will become afavourite among your friends and acquaintances. Indeed, it may be so good that I shall have to include it in a future edition ofthis book I No oneseems to knowjust how the name'cocktails' originated. It was certainly mentioned in American literature in the late 1870's. The story goes that somewhere in the Caribbean the local planters and others werefond ofmixed drinks. These were known as 'Dracs', possibly a corruption of Drake, whose exploits there were still famous. The local bartenders would mix these with the slender root ofa plant known as Cola de Gallo, which in English means'Cock's Tail'. The taste for these drinks spread wider and wider, and they eventually came to be known as cocktails. As for me, I have worked in many famous hotels in England and abroad. I started at the Carlton,in London,which was one of the most famous hotels in the world and which is no more. Later, I worked at the Semiramis in Cairo and then gained a great deal of experience all over Europe. I opened the Buttery Bar at the Hyde Park Hotel in London some years before the last war and when the war was over I opened a new Cocktail Bar at Fleming's Hotel in London. In 1950 I went to the Piccadilly Hotel and have been Head Bartender there for a number of years. So much for my experience in the art of mixing drinks.

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