Message 14730 of 22774 in Behind the Bar

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Some of what Irvin Cobb wrote about the julep in 1934:

Come we now, reverently, please, to what I insist is the queen mother of all 
the infusions--the Mint Julep.  Who first compiled this most regal of 
refreshments?  Nobody answers.  But our hearts are throbbing monuments to his 
anonymous memory.  The very origin of the julep is wreathed in the mists of 
antiquity--the same as the early wandering of the Celts, the identitiy of the 
inventor of books or the mystery of who it was that smote Billy Patterson.  We 
do know that it was evolved in the South, that it has been enshrined in the 
affectations of a grateful constituency for at least a century.  Throughout 
the universe it now is popular, and that loud and thankful labial 
aknowledgment of its superiorities at the conclusion of the draft is the smack 
that was heard around the world.

There are many schools of thought on this important subject, as there are many 
methods of adorning the masterpiece.  So great has been the argument on this 
subject that often the controversy could only by solved by recourse to pistols 
at dawn.  One group holds that the bruised mint should be left in the potion.  
but my grandfather always insisted that a man who would let the crushed leaves 
and the mangled stemlets steep in the finished concoction would put scorpions 
in a baby's bed.  And as for the dash of nutmeg which some barbarians insist 
on sifting across the top of the glass--well, down our way we've always had a 
theory that the Civil War was not brought on by Secession or Slavery or the 
State's Rights issue.  These matters contributed to the quarrel, but there was 
a deeper reason.  It was brought on by some Yankee coming down South and 
putting nutmeg in a julep.  So our folks just up and left the Union flat.

Some expert practitioners insist on Rye as the basic motif.  Practically all 
Marylanders, many Virginians, and Carolinians, New Yorkers and New Englanders 
and a few Tennesseeans hold this doctrine as sanctified.  The majority of 
Kentuckians, the folk of Chicago, the middle and far west, Texans, Missourians 
and Louisianians swear by holy Bourbon, but all the deft technicians, 
wheresoever found, agree that the liquor must be old, mellow whiskey,--the 
blandest in its savor, the richest in its perfume, the most lingering in its 
softly-expiring after-aroma.

In the name of the julep I have seen high crimes and flagrant misdemeanors 
committed.  In one Corn Belt city, which I shall not name here because 
probably it's enough ashamed of itself already, I have stood in horror and 
with seared eyeballs have seen a julep converted into a harsh green tea by the 
sacriligious use of peppermint sprigs--not mint, peppermint!  But if one's 
fancy inclines that way, why not just swallow a mothball and be done with it?  
Along the Eastern Seaboard--north of Baltimore, of course, because they know 
better there--I have been affronted by an architectural mostrosity, containing 
such foreign substances as flavoring extracts, canned goods, artificial 
coloring, grated cinnamon, and almost anything else that wasn't nailed down.  
Any person who would call that a julep--and these savages actually did--would 
be sufficiently ignorant to think Cincinnati is a new form of chewing gum.  
And once, in Farther Maine, a criminal masquerading as a barkeeper at a summer 
hotel, reared for me a strange structure that had nearly everything in it 
except the proper constituents of a julep.  It had in it pineapple, orange 
peel, lemon juice, pickled peaches, sundry other fruits and various berries, 
both fresh and preserved; and the whipped up white of an egg, and for a 
crowning atrocity a flirt of allspice across that expanse of pallid meringue.  
When I could in some degree restrain my weeping, I told him things.  
"Brother," I told him, between sobs, "brother, all this needs is a crust on it 
and a knife to eat it with, and it would be a typical example of the supreme 
effect in pastry of your native New England housewife's breakfast table.  But, 
brother," I said, "I didn't come in here for a pie, I mentioned a julep; and 
you, my poor erring brother, you have done this to me!  Go", I said, "go and 
sin no more or, at least, sin as little as possible."

myers