Cocktail Book Illustrated with Cocktail Napkins

Americana: Eight Cocktail Napkins Hand Blocked with Recipes and the Histories of Eight Famous Drinks [cover title]

Notes: One of the more curious Prohibition-era cocktail books, eight recipes illustrated with attractive color-printed cocktail napkins mounted on the facing page.

The cocktails are the Manhattan, Blue Blazer, Deadwood Duck, Rip Van Winkle Sleeper, Belmont Park, Alabama, Barbary Coast, and the New Orleans Drip. The recipes all call for "non-alcoholic" spirits (dating this to Prohibition) and can be rather odd. For example, the Barbary Coast Cocktail is usually whiskey, gin, creme de cacao, and cream. The version here is actually a Singapore (or Gin) Sling:

1/2 Holland Dry (non-alcoholic)
1/2 Cherry Brandy Flavor
4 Dashes Lemon Juice
4 Dashes Grenadine (non-alcoholic)

More strangeness: The supposedly "wellknown" Belmont Park is basically a flat Chicago Fizz (gin, egg, port, hold the soda ). The Blue Blazer, a cocktail made by tossing flaming whiskey through the air, is credited to one "Bill Murphy" in the Gay 90s, some 30 years after the instructions were first published. It is illustrated with a napkin depicting a gravity-defying horizontal toss of flaming liquid, possibly based on the well-known image from Jerry Thomas's Bartender's Guide, first published in 1862.

A rare and one-of-a-kind sort of cocktail book.

18 pages. 9 by 7-1/2 inches. Eight mounted napkins (6-1/8 by 4-3/4 inches) of woven white cotton fabric with fringe on the two short ends. Most of the designs are printed in five colors: black, blue, red, yellow, and green; one adds orange; the Blue Blazer is printed without any blue.

Edition + Condition: First edition. A very good copy, with minor wear to the covers and professional (ECS Conservation) reinforcement of the notoriously fragile spine and gutters. Napkins all present and very good (minor discoloration due to the glue, as usual). Conservation report laid in.

Publication: France: (ca. 1920s).

Item No: #361676

Price: $3,750