Contraband Cocktails - 9781612194585

In 48 recipes and dozens of photos, a lively and informative guide to the most popular cocktails from Prohibition to the present day

Did you know there were 32,000 speakeasies in New York City during Prohibition? And that most of the cocktails we know today were invented by Americans who fled prohibition for France or Germany after the country went dry? Indeed, Prohibition was the Golden Years for the Cocktail!

Here’s a book full of stories, photos, and trivia . . . to be enjoyed alone or with friends . . . but always responsibly! This is just a small sample:

• The Bloody Mary was first mixed in the early 1920s by an Ohio-born bartender named Fernand “Pete” Petiot, at the Paris bar that would be later known as Harry’s New York Bar.
• A mother, afraid that her daughter might drink at parties, also became a major bootlegger, rolling gin barrels around the living room to “age” them before 5 p.m.
• Included are select recipes from Cocktail Recipes Mixed by Famous People for a Famous Hotel, whose contributors include Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Marx Brothers, Marlene Dietrich, H.L. Mencken, W.C. Fields.