Gentleman's Companion Charles Baker Exotic Drink and Cookery 1946 Cocktails Rare

Description: The Gentleman's Companion. Volume I: Being an Exotic Cookery Book, or, Around the World with Knife, Fork and Spoon. Volume II: Being an Exotic Drinking Book, or, Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask.BAKER, Charles H.Published by Crown Publishers, New York, 1946 Charles Henry Baker Jr. (December 25, 1895 – November 11, 1987) was an American author best known for his culinary and cocktail writings. These books have become highly collectible among cocktail aficionados and culinary historians. We are still heartily of the opinion that decent libation supports as many million lives as it threatens; donates pleasure and sparkle to more lives than it shadows; inspires more brilliance in the world of art, music, letters, and common ordinary intelligent conversation, than it dims.[1] — Charles Henry Baker Jr.BiographyHe was born on Christmas Day in 1895 in Zellwood, Florida, to Jane Paul Baker (1859-1916) and Charles Henry Baker Sr. (1848-1924). Both of his parents were from Pennsylvania.[3] He later attended Trinity College. By 1918, he was working at Norton Abrasives as a grinder in Worcester, Massachusetts;[4] he later worked as a district sales manager. He moved to New York City, where he worked as a magazine editor and submitted stories to small publications. In 1932, Baker met Pauline Elizabeth Paulsen, an heiress to the Paulsen mining fortune, on a world cruise where he had signed on as the cruise line's publicist.[5] After they were married they had built for them an art deco house called Java Head in Coconut Grove, Florida in which they lived for thirty years.[6] They built a second house in Coconut Grove called Java Head East, where they lived in the 1960s. They later moved to Naples, Florida. Baker spent much of his life traveling the world and chronicling food and drink recipes for magazines like Esquire, Town & Country, and Gourmet, for which he wrote a column during the 1940s called "Here's How".[1] Baker collected many of those recipes in his two-volume set The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery and Drinking Book, originally published in 1939 by Derrydale Press.[7] John J. Poister in 1983 wrote, "Volume II of The Gentleman's Companion, by Charles H. Baker Jr., is the best book on exotic drinks I have ever encountered".[8] Condé Nast contributing writer St. John Frizell wrote, "It's his prose, not his recipes, that deserves a place in the canon of culinary literature ... at times humorously grandiloquent, at times intimate and familiar, Baker fills his stories with colorful details about his environment and his drinking companions — Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner among them".[1] While his culinary nonfiction garnered Baker much praise, he was less well regarded as a novelist. His only novel, Blood of the Lamb, was published in 1946 by Rinehart & Company. About it, a Time reviewer wrote in the magazine's April 22, 1946, issue, "Blood of the Lamb is not much of a novel, but it is long on local color, loud piety, snuff, 'stump liquor' and local talk"[9] Words to the Wise No. VII. Offering up an earnest plea for recentness in all eggs to be used in cocktails or drinks of any kind, for that matter. A stale or storage egg in a decent mixed drink is like a stale or storage joke in critical and intelligent company. Eschew them rabidly. If really fresh eggs can't be had, mix other type drinks, for the result will reflect no merit round the hearth, no matter how hospitable it may be.[10] — Charles H. Baker Jr. in The Gentlemen's Companion: Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and FlaskSome of Baker's exotic and often esoteric drink recipes from The Gentleman's Companion are once again finding favor at modern cocktail bars specializing in classic drinks, such as Manhattan's Pegu Club, where Baker's "Jimmie Roosevelt"—a mixture of champagne, cognac, and Chartreuse liqueur—was found on the menu.[1] He died on November 11, 1987, in Naples, Florida.[11][12] PublicationsRejections of 1927. (1928. Edited by Baker).[13]The Gentleman's Companion (two volumes, 1939 edition).[14][15][16]Blood of the Lamb (1946).[9][17][18]The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask (1946 edition).The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery Book or Around the World with Knife, Fork, and Spoon (1946 edition).[19]The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery/Drinking Book (combined volume I and II) (1946 edition)[20]Knife, Fork, and Spoon: Eating Around the World (1992).[21]The Esquire Culinary Companion (1959).[22][23]The South American Gentleman's Companion (1951). Charles H. Baker. It’s a name reminiscent of an obscure attorney, perhaps a chiropractor. But CHB is a largely overlooked legend in cocktail culture, a Gilded Age bon vivant who almost singlehandedly imported “exotic” foreign drinks onto menus across the United States long before mass market jet travel, Hilton hotels, or even American GIs returning home after World War II brought back far-flung culture. An unlikely hybrid of Indiana Jones and Jay Gatsby, the globetrotting writer for Esquire, Town & Country, and the now-shuttered Gourmet was the first to put the culture in cocktail culture, at least according to St. John Frizell. The owner of Brooklyn’s Fort Defiance bar, Frizell is Baker’s unofficial biographer; he has largely modeled his career after the life of his idol, even junking his own magazine staff job in favor of a period of Baker-style globetrotting—he spent five months in South America personally visiting many of his hero’s ports. “He was a hustler,” says Frizell, admiringly. ADVERTISEMENT Inspire your next adventure
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Get Digital AccessIf you spot a Farewell to Ernest on any menu, know that Baker claimed to have cooked it up while goodbye-ing Mr. Hemingway himself. Advertisement It all started with the death of a relative from whom Baker inherited enough cash to book a cruise around the world. It was 1926, and that single trip would change the course of his life. While America lumbered under Prohibition, Baker was smitten with the cocktails he could try elsewhere, and his adventures introduced him to unfamiliar foreign drinks such as cachaça, pisco sours, and mezcal long before most cocktail experts were sampling them. By the early 1930s, he’d wrangled a job as the publicist for the Hamburg American cruise line so he could keep traveling and drinking; at each port, Baker wrote down recipes for dishes and cocktails he'd tried in a thick notebook. While working on one of those cruises, the SS Resolute, he also snagged an heiress, Pauline Paulsen, as his wife, and it was Paulsen’s fortune that would finance the family’s far-flung adventures and lavish lifestyle. (Their former residence, the 10-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot Miami mansion, Java Head, just sold for almost $9 million.) Watch This Rob Lowe & John Owen Lowe’s Favorite Things About L.A. Baker collated his experiences into two books, both now revered among the bartending community for the drinks they contain and the glimpse of cocktail culture in that period they provide. The first, The Gentleman’s Companion, was initially published in 1939 and, much reprinted, it’s now easily bought secondhand for around $60. The second, The South American Gentleman’s Companion, appeared 12 years later; far scarcer in its original form, Frizell helped steer a thirty-buck reissue in 2014. Baker’s books adopt an unusual format, combining musings, memories and, most importantly, recipes. “What really sets him apart is that he is properly focused on the context of a cocktail rather than just the ingredients,” Frizell says. “His books are like a traveler’s journal, or letters someone wrote home.” One example? In 1926, Baker had been on an excursion to the city of Sandakan, when his motor died off the coast of Borneo in the Sulu Sea. A small boat approached; its captain wearing a “G-string and a headdress.” Of the encounter, Baker wrote in The Gentleman’s Companion, “Somehow we managed to convey the idea that we were not wallowing there on a glassy sea with a molten brass sun striking like a sword across our necks, because we wanted to." Once rescued, Baker then headed straight for a drink called the Colonial Cooler at the British Club. Image may contain: Drink, Cocktail, Alcohol, Beverage, Beer, and LemonadeDante NYC Serves 12 Kinds of Negronis (And We Tried Them All)Baker's wide-reading influence isn’t limited to cocktails, either: Merriam-Webster credits Baker as the first person to introduce the word ceviche into the English language. Even back in the U.S., Frizell notes, Baker's pastimes smacked of adventure and intrigue—drinking with William Faulkner, having beachfront dinners with Errol Flynn and Robert Frost, and more. Advertisement Of all the classic recipes for which we have Baker to thank, it’s Remember the Maine with which he’s most indelibly associated. A riff on a Manhattan featuring rye, vermouth, cherry heering, and a dash of absinthe, Baker credits it to a trip to Cuba. And if you spot a Farewell to Ernest on any menu—kirsch plus cherry or raspberry syrup and a dash of lime—know that Baker claimed to have cooked it up while goodbye-ing Mr. Hemingway himself before his trip to Spain around the time of its civil war. (“If you ever wondered whose oyster the world is,” a 1954 Esquire article notes, “meet Charles H. Baker, Jr.”) Unfortunately, Baker was better at drinking than making cocktails—or perhaps he waited until too late in the evening to note them down precisely. His recipes are often hit-and-miss, so it’s best to enjoy reading his books while leaving it up to the experts to make his cocktail successes. (One of Baker's "unpotables," according to The Atlantic, comprised "gin, sweet vermouth, pineapple syrup, grenadine, lemon juice, heavy cream, and an egg white.") Most seasoned barkeeps can now rustle up a Baker recipe or two, notably New York City’s Julie Reiner who often features Baker’s recipes at bars she owns, like the retro-skewing Flatiron Lounge. So, too, does Frizell at Fort Defiance, where he proudly displays a Japanese black lacquerware shaker with a gold rooster that was once Baker’s own. Or, you could even make a pilgrimage to Seoul, South Korea where the bar inside the Four Seasons is named, albeit obliquely, in his honor—the Charles H. You’ll probably be besting Baker himself—per Frizell, it’s unlikely that the globetrotting adventurer ever set foot in the capital.

Price: 99.99 USD

Location: Utica, New York

End Time: 2024-10-08T19:10:12.000Z

Shipping Cost: 10 USD