TotC2009 notes: New Orleans Pharmacists
9
Jul/090
Jul/090
(Event link.)
A history course about the evolution, if not the creation, of the cocktail in early New Orleans, led by Phil Greene, Ted Haigh, Lorin Gaudin, and Jay Hendrickson.
Phil, with some history about pharmacists, bitters, and Peychaud:
- America’s first licensed pharmacist was Louis Dufillo, granted a license by the Cabildo at 628 Toluse in 1803, moved to 514 Chartres in 1814.
- (photographs of various early bitters bottles, more at the Museum of the American Cocktail)
- Hostetters bitters were a popular brand early on
- Peychaud (Phil’s ancestor) credited with creating the cocktail – bitters, brandy, sugar, and water in a coquetier (an egg cup)… (gr: although opinions differ on whether he was first and on whether that’s the etymology of the word)
- Peychaud came to NOLA during the insurrection in Saint-Domingue, while his sister went to Paris
- Stoughton’s bitters was already in common use, but we haven’t any idea as to its recipe now
- Peychaud’s opened a pharmacy with his sister (who he tracked down in France and had brought to NOLA) ~ 1838 at 437 Rue Royale (now the antique gun, sword, and coin shop)
- Peychaud ran many competative advertisements, referencing his bitters’ use in the Sazerac Bar
- 6 May 1806: newspaper article in the Columbian making fun of a lost election uses the word “cocktail”
- Peychaud’s obituary on 30 July 1883 states that he was 80 years old at death, making it rather unlikely that his egg cup was the source of the name
- Phil presents a Sazerac (spinning the glass to wash it with absinthe… while wearing a rain poncho to avoid staining his suit):
- chill 2 rocks glasses
- In the first:
- 1 splash simple syrup (gr: or a raw sugar cube)
- 2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
- mix these, fill the glass with ice
- add 2 oz Sazerac rye (or, traditionally, brandy or cognac)
- stir
- In the other:
- 1 teaspoon Herbsaint (gr: or absinthe)
- spin the glass in the air
- strain glass 1 into glass 2
- garnish with lemon rind
Ted, with some history of the cocktail’s content and references in the press:
- Originally a cocktail was:
- Consumed in the morning (not “just”, but “also”).
- (Just about anything that) included bitters.
- At the time, adding bitters to liquor was as shocking as adding Pepto-Bismal to beer would be today: anyone who’d do that was a reprobate.
- Practice probably from the British brandy & bitters, used to warm up in a clammy climate
- Those “snake oil salesmen” in old westerns and histories were essentially selling (something like) bitters, whiskey adulterated with various elements, but some were poisonous.
- This resulted in the Pure Food & Drug Act.
- Everyone began to believe that bitters, as medicine, was a scam, cocktails became the only legitimate use.
- By the 1830s, newspaper journalists, “a bunch of alcoholics” (Ted’s words), were writing positively about cocktails.
- Ted has six bitters recipes from the era and is happy to share. (I’ve emailed him, I’ll repost here if/when I hear back. One of the TalesBlog people was there and suggested she’d post the recipes, but maybe she didn’t connect with Ted.)
- There were three references to cocktails [in newspapers, I think] in the early 1800s, all are insults: how do we know that they’re an accurate representation of society’s view?
- Someone (missed the name) published a genus of cocktails (I definitely missed some of these):
- gum ticklers:
- glass of gin
- dram of bitters
- …
- flem cutters
- mint julep
- [illegible -- yes, in my own notes, shut up]
- …
- gall breakers:
- grog
- flip
- samson (stewed rum & cider)
- toddy
- bishop
- doctor
- cocktail: rum & honey
- gum ticklers:
- Stemming from that last listing of a cocktail including rum and honey, Ted presents a cocktail he’d previously called the Hogarth, but is renaming the Croswell [gr: I think that's the name of the editor of Balance and Columbian Repository who defined the cocktail as the oft-quoted "stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters", but I'm not positive] including just rum, honey… and bitters of course.
- [I can't figure out whether this was an aside at the time or me jumping forward and back in my notes to fill in gaps, but:] At the time, acid phosphates in a solution were thought to be good for the brain. They were used for cocktails, but that stuff doesn’t exist any longer. Ostensibly, they made a drink dry “like a good Barolo”.
- Jamaica ginger (”Jake”), intended as an anti-spasmodic medication, was used in cocktails as well.
- During Prohibition, one company produced a tainted, lousy Jake, damaged the nervous system, “Jake leg”.
- Note that most bathtub distillates were more like rum than like gin.
- Instead of separating out the tails, as professional distillers do, moonshiners just used the whole distilling output (heart & tails), and then add as much as a whole bottle of Jake to cover the taste.
- Now then, the Croswell:
- 2 pts Van Ousten Batavia Arack
- 2 pts Clement VSOP Agricole
- 2 pts “Rhum [M?]agrido” (spelling?) – Ted says that this can be replicated decently with 1 pt Angostura 1919 Rum and 1 pt 10 Cane Rum.
- 1 dash Angostura bitters
- 1 dash Fee’s Barrel-Aged Bitters
- 2 tspns honey syrup
Lorin Gaudin, mostly covering the impact of the Ursilines sisters on pharmacy:
- Pharmacy laws first came from New Orleans.
- The first (non-licensed) pharmacist was a sister from the Ursilines convent who practiced herbal healing – Sister Frances Xavier (year?)
- Ostensibly Sister FX published a list of herbs she used and their applications, but if the convent still has it, they aren’t sharing.
- Two local chefs, Scott Boswell and [missed it...] tend the garden now in the convent now, which contains mostly parsley, chervil, etcetera (which it likely also had then)
- Picayune Creole Cookbook, 1901, includes a list of palliative herbs: time, sage, rosemary, mint, dandelion
- The convent’s still there at Governor Nichols & Ursilines, old[est?] building in New Orleans, with a 267-year-old stairwell; it survived the fire of 1787.
- Another product of the pharmacists of the time (who Lorin notes tended to call themselves “druggists”, rather than “pharmacists”) developed was nectar syrup [cf, Orgeat, Falernum]
- A modern example: CoolBrew
Jay, presenting a history of Herbsaint:
- J. Marion Legendre created Herbsaint after absinthe was banned in 1912 at the drug store his father had started at 124 Bourbon St.
- During WWI, Legendre had a drink similar to absinthe.
- During Prohibition, Legendre’s drug store had the US’s highest volume license to distribute “prescription acohol”.
- In December 1933, he launched Legendre Absinthe, with distilling license number 48 (because he was completely ready to roll, having been doing this throughout Prohibition)
- An early competitor was Jung & Wulff; both they and Legendre advertising absinthe
- “Modern Pernod–nasty stuff, I can’t tolerate it, …”
- FACA stopped Legendre and Jung & Wulff from manufacturing their absinthes (which weren’t, really, but the name was scary)
- Legendre simply changed the name to Herbsaint; Herbe Sainte is the French/Creole name for wormwood (literally “sacred herb”)
- Note from Lorin: the Ursilines also referred to all of their herbs as sacred.
- Herbsaint trademarked on 1 March 1934
- The early advertising for Herbsaint stands out, includes pictures of the bottle, and assures the public that it’s not that horrible absinthe stuff. Advertising created by William B. Wisdom and included very complex graphics for ads of the time.
- Legendre had Tulane analyze his product to validate that it wasn’t poison.
- Also sold “Old New Orleans” (in the style of Peychaud’s) and orange bitters [slides with photos of the bottles; not sure whether this slide show's up online -- anybody?]
- … and also premixed bottled cocktails
- and “minis”, to sample the product