evnme
My little lamb
Member since 8/05 12633 total posts
Name:
aka momma2b
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love cocktails? (read this!)
a guide to drink measurements!
link
origin of the term cocktail
A favorite theory is that "cocktail" was derived from the 16th century drink "****-ale," which had as an ingredient--I kid you not--a dead rooster. A recipe from the 1500s:
Take 10 gallons of ale and a large ****, the older the better; parboil the ****, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar until his bones are broken (you must gut him when you flaw him). Then, put the **** into two quarts of sack, and put to it five pounds of raisins of the sun-stoned; some blades of mace, and a few cloves. Put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has been working, put the bag and ale together in vessel. In a week or nine days bottle it up, fill the bottle just above the neck and give it the same time to ripen as other ale.
Lest you think that was just an example of The Funny Stuff People Did A Long Time Ago, people actually still make this stuff. Boston Beer Co. recently whipped up some ****-ale from a recipe from Compleat Housewife (a British cookbook from 1736), out of 12 gallons of beer, "one large and elderly cockerel," raisins, mace and cloves. According to Koch, the founder of Boston Beer Co., the beer was a great success. "People loved the idea (after they got over a little shock) and were surprised at how tasty it was," he claimed. I'm sure. Given the coffee-, maple-, and hazelnut-flavored beers that crowd our shelves, can poultry-flavored beer be far behind?
In keeping with the chicken motif, our next possibility mentions a "****-ale" that was a combination of bread and alcohol fed to fighting cocks. The owners would partake of the mixture themselves as a victory celebration. Another cockfighting-related story claimed it came from a ritualistic toast of the victor in a cockfight, in which into the drink would be inserted a number of feathers corresponding to the number of feathers left in the victorious ****'s tail. Perhaps it was an au natural predecessor to our modern-day pink plastic flamingo swizzle sticks.
(source )
Message edited 12/24/2006 1:27:44 PM.
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