Cocktail
Most commonly, a cocktail is a combination of one or more spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as juices, flavored syrups, tonic water, shrubs, and bitters.
They were used in the court of Philip II of Macedon to prepare and serve mixtures of wine, water, honey as well as extracts of aromatic herbs and flowers, during the banquets.
The first definition of a cocktail as an alcoholic beverage appeared three years later in The Balance and Columbian Repository (Hudson, New York) May 13, 1806.
Cocktails continued to evolve and gain popularity throughout the 1900s, with the term eventually expanding to cover all mixed drinks.
[13] It is possible to mix a cocktail combining a number of bases, as long as they share essential characteristics, though it is considered "dangerous".
[14] The modifying agent functions as a buffer for the sharp bite of the base, and adds character to its natural flavour.
It is presumably from "cock-tail", meaning "with tail standing up, like a cock's", in particular of a horse, but how this came to be applied to alcoholic mixed drinks is unclear.
Låftman concluded that cocktail was an acceptable alcoholic drink, but diluted, not a "purebred", a thing "raised above its station".
Hence the highly appropriate slang word used earlier about inferior horses and sham gentlemen.The first recorded use of cocktail not referring to a horse is found in The Morning Post and Gazetteer in London, England, March 20, 1798:[21] Mr. Pitt, two petit vers of "L'huile de Venus" Ditto, one of "perfeit amour" Ditto, "cock-tail" (vulgarly called ginger) The Oxford English Dictionary cites the word as originating in the U.S.
The first recorded use of cocktail as a beverage (possibly non-alcoholic) in the United States appears in The Farmer's Cabinet, April 28, 1803:[22] 11.
": Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, in as much as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head.
[6][5] The first publication of a bartenders' guide which included cocktail recipes was in 1862 – How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon Vivant's Companion, by "Professor" Jerry Thomas.
[22] In the 1869 recipe book Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks, by William Terrington, cocktails are described as:[31] Cocktails are compounds very much used by "early birds" to fortify the inner man, and by those who like their consolations hot and strong.The term highball appears during the 1890s to distinguish a drink composed only of a distilled spirit and a mixer.
In 1924, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis bought the Walsh mansion at 4510 Lindell Boulevard, and it has served as the local archbishop's residence ever since.
[37] Cocktails became less popular in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, until resurging in the 1980s with vodka often substituting for the original gin in drinks such as the martini.
