380. Yale Cocktail

 My interpretation:
  2 oz Bombay Sapphire London Dry gin
  1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters 
  1 dash St. George Absinthe Verte
  1 lemon peel

Fill mixing-glass with cracked ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, twist lemon peel, garnish, serve. — This recipe comes from Straub 1913. Craddock’s version in 1930 has orange bitters, Angostura, lemon peel, and a splash of soda. The Old Waldorf Bar Days, with this note:

calls for Tom Gin and Sweet Vermouth stirred and strained and finished with the seltzer. McElhone in 1927 calls for gin, orange bitters, Angostura bitters, lemon peel, and soda. Which drink best represents the institution in question is unsure.

373. West India Cocktail

My interpretation:

  2 oz Martini & Rossi Extra Dry

  2 dashes Angostura Bitters

  2 lemon peels (for the shaker)

Fill mixing-glass with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This recipe is first found in Straub 1913; from there it makes its way to JM 1916. McElhone has a related West Indian Cocktail built in a tumbler with sugar, Angostura, gin, lemon juice, and ice. This stronger drink is reproduced by Craddock as well. Though featuring a different base, these drinks indicate that the West India was visually conceived, at least, as a lowball drink, and ought properly to be presented as such here. The Old Waldorf Bar Days recipe splits the difference, half Tom gin and half dry vermouth, with Angostura or (any other) West India bitters available; in which recipe no sugar is added, the Old Tom being sweeter already. This drink is stirred rather than shaken, and though not specifying the tumbler or lowball glass, this instruction may hint at as much.

321. Sherry Cocktail

My interpretation:
  2 oz Lustau Amontillado Los Arcos
  2 dashes Fee Brothers Cardamom Bitters
  1 dash Luxardo maraschino

Stir with ice, strain into cocktail glass, squeeze lemon peel, garnish with cherry (and lemon). — Obviously I have departed from Jack’s recipe on the supposition that a Sherry Cocktail ought properly to have sherry, not port. Port would have improved this cocktail (as would a superior bitters). After several attempts, I settled on Port and Angostura bitters (Dr. Elmegirab would be good), though I thought the Bristol Cream Sherry was a good runner up. Something sweet of that kind must have been used originally. 

Clearly, this is a very old recipe, as the name, ingredients, and characteristic wording suggest (directions such as “stir up with a spoon” are found mostly in books predating Boothby). It already appears in JM1908. What is of interest here is when, precisely, the recipe was altered by Jack Grohusko. A cursory investigation of the Manuals reveals the answer to be 1910 (the Second Edition), when suddenly “port wine” appears. Was there a sherry shortage? Or did customers think the “sherry wine” of the earlier versions made it too sour or insipid? Straub, at any rate, retains the use of sherry in 1913, and substitutes orange bitters for the maraschino.

201. Kentucky Colonel

 My interpretation:
  2.25 oz Henry McKenna 10 Year
  0.75 oz DOM Benedictine

Stir well (30 seconds) with ice, strain into Old Fashioned glass with fresh piece of ice (my addition). Garnish with lemon peel. — This simple, satisfying “new fashioned” mixture (with Benedictine serving for sweetness and complexity) first appears in Straub 1913 and is then picked up by JM 1916.

200. Junkins Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.5 oz Hochstadter’s 100 Pf Rye
  0.5 oz Alessio Chinato

Stir with ice, strain into whisky glass with piece ice, twist lemon peel, serve with spoon. — A recipe under this name first appears at least in JM 1910 (2nd Edition) — the 1st Edition before me lacks the appropriate page— with the following recipe:

However, after the publication of Straub 1913, the JM recipe follows his Rye or Gin + Vermouth variation. It is possible that this was closer to the source which JM was trying to replicate based on visual memory. In 1912, JM had a different variation (again with a small glass, spoon, and lemon peel), resembling a sort of “Improved Rye Cocktail” served down:

Pictured below is the post-Straub recipe as it appears in JM 1933:

174. Honolulu Cocktail

 My interpretation:
  1 tsp powdered sugar
  1 T orange juice
  1/2 T lime juice
  1 dash Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao
  1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake with ice, strain, garnish with lemon twist, serve. — The original recipe appearing in Jack’s Manual 1908 and continued in 1910 is quite different, resembling more a whisky highball:

The realization of this recipe’s similarity to the Whisky Highball in the more organized 3rd Edition (1910s) must have led to the new, more Tropical-inspired, gin-based, citrus-heavy recipe that continues thereafter, and which seems more prescient of the tiki style that would shortly develop.

154. Good Times Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.25 oz Aviation American Gin
  0.75 oz Dolin Dry

Fill mixing-glass with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, express lemon peel over glass, garnish, serve. — This martini-riff recipe comes from Straub 1913, where Tom or Cordial Gin is specified. The Tom Gin continues in JM 1916, but is reduced in 1933 to simply “gin.” The “good times” aspect is suggested by a heavier (and thus more intoxicating) portion of gin. Evidence is wanting to connect it to the late-19th c. Good Times Club.
 

143. Fourth Regiment Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz McKenna 10 Year Bonded Whisky
  1 oz Dolin Rouge
  1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters
  1 dash Angostura bitters
  1 dash Bitter Truth celery bitters

Shake with ice, strain into cocktail glass, garnish with lemon peel, serve. — This classic Manhattan riff comes to JM 1916 from an unknown source, not appearing in Straub 1913. While it is usually made with Rye these days, I take Jack’s generic whisky as an invitation to defy the trend, and the experiment is successful on the whole, the celery working nicely with the flavors of the bourbon.
 

139. Flushing Cocktail

My Interpretation:
  1.5 oz Western Grace brandy
  1 oz Dolin Rouge
  1 dash homemade gum syrup
  1 dash Angostura bitters
  1 lemon peel

Stir with cracked ice, strain into Old Fashioned glass with large ice, express lemon peel and garnish. — A sweetened brandy Manhattan served down, this recipe appears first in Straub 1913 with a 2:1 ratio of brandy to vermouth. For his 1916 edition, Jack adjusts the ratio to 3:2.

105. Cotton Cocktail

My interpretation:
   1.5 oz Bulleit Rye
  0.5 oz Dolin Rouge
  0.5 oz Noilly Prat Extra Dry
  1 dash St. George Absinthe
  2 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters

Fill mixing-glass with broken ice; stir, strain into cocktail glass, and serve. — This “perfect” Manhattan riff with added dash of absinthe and use of lemon peel, first appears in the Third Edition, JM 1910 (II) and continues to JM 1933.
 

55. Brighton Cocktail

 My interpretation:
  1.5 oz Carpano Antica
  0.75 oz Uncle Val’s Restorative
  0.75 oz Hayman’s Old Tom Gin
  1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters

Stir well (20 seconds) with ice, garnish with twisted lemon peel, serve. — Another interesting cocktail apparently picked up from Straub 1914 for the JM 1916 edition, this “Martini” riff sweetens the gin side slightly with a spot of Old Tom.

41. Blackstone No. 1.

 My interpretation:
  2.25 oz Uncle Val’s Restorative Gin
  0.75 oz Martini & Rossi Rosso

Shake with cracked ice, strain. Squeeze lemon peel and use for garnish. Another “Martini” variation named for the Chicago hotel (see Blackstone, Blackstone No. 2). In Jack’s 1916 edition, following Straub (1914) he calls for Old Tom Gin.

24. Barry Cocktail

This is an interesting entry that presents a few items for consideration. Firstly, be amused by the misattribution ’Frisco in the 1908 Edition:
 

Secondly, the method and description have an air of being borrowed from another source. This is not Jack’s natural voice.
 
My interpretation:
  4 dashes Angostura bitters
  1.5 oz Hawthorn’s London Dry Gin
  1.5 oz Martini & Rossi Rosso Sweet Vermouth
  5 drops (about 1 barspoon) Hiram Walker White Crème de Menthe 

In small mixing-glass with one large piece of ice stir mixture well (20 seconds), strain into small bar glass (cordial or lowball) and serve with ice water (separate glass). Squeeze lemon peel or twist lemon rind over drink and use for garnish. — A cooling bracer (more bracing if you use overproof / Plymouth gin) that would be just the thing to sip in a makeshift “Barbary Coast” booze-tent after a tiring day of hauling charred timbers and clearing blackened bricks from the remains of your recently burnt-down house in the City by the Bay (Jack’s First Edition came out a couple years after the Great Earthquake and Fire). And it comes with built-in mouthwash.

11. Applejack Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters
  3 oz Laird’s Applejack 

“Cider brandy” sure sounds a lot better than Applejack, if it weren’t for the name . . . Anyway, a slight variation on the instructions, as usual when peels are involved in the mixture: Stir over cracked ice (with a spoon this time!), strain into glass. Drop in medium-size olive, squeeze lemon peel over drink, discard. Serve drink.