In 1943, M.F.K. Fisher’s third book, How to Cook a Wolf, was published. This essay demonstrates Mary Frances’s relaxed yet authoritative approach to gastronomy as she advises wartime drinkers on how to afford—and enjoy—their tipples.
They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet Quaff immortality and joy.
–John Milton
ONE INFALLIBLE WAY TO KNOW THAT A COUNTRY is at war is to read of the increased activity of the militant prohibitionists. Another fairly good way is to read statistics about the rise in pub-crawling, or as some people call it, alcoholic consumption. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg … the blue-nose or the red-nose?
Whichever, there can be no doubt that war’s fever breeds drought as well as thirst, and that for countless centuries some men have frowned and scolded and some men have drunk deeper as Mars squeezed them.
Less than a month after our country entered this last war, Washington prohibitionists were praying and proving that Pearl Harbor, not to mention France’s Fall, was directly traceable to the bottle. At the same time other men in Washington (not to mention Pearl Harbor and perhaps even Fallen France’s safe cellars) were wetting their throats and drinking to what they hoped was their own and the nation’s health.
If you happen to be unencumbered by childhood’s scruples and maturity’s sage ponderings, you will have gone to a great many cocktail parties in your time and will have decided, along with almost every other thing human left alive, that they are anathema. They are expensive. They are dull. They are good for a time, like a dry Martini, and like that all-demanding drink they can lift you high and then drop you hideously into a slough of boredom, morbidity, and indigestion.
When you reach this point of perception, and admit once for all that such routs shall see no more of you, there is but one step more. Then you will decide that from now on you’ll drink as you please, and with whom, and where, and how … and what.
Given a number of present-day ways to be poor (and whether you earn an immediately impressive salary or not, you will feel poor for several days or hours before each new check is cashed, in wartime), there is one sure way to feel poorer. That is to form the specious habit of stopping at the local grog-shop, the Greek’s around the corner, Ye Cozie Nooke Cocktail Lounge. Even if cocktails keep their pre-war prices, the liquor is bound to fluctuate in quality, and it is easy as scat to pile up astonishing bills in one or two pre-dinner drop-ins, and even more horrendous hangovers.
The first thing to do, of course, is to stop going there. The next thing is to find a reputable substitute, since even a young man cannot too easily quit such solace as is offered by the dim jukey confines of the neighborhood gin-mill.
One of the best antidotes, if anything so pleasant could be termed so damningly, is to decide the person you like best to drink with and see if you can arrange to have a pre-dinner nip with her or him … alone. Alone does not necessarily connotate salaciously, lasciviously, or even amorously, since if you like a person well enough to drink alone with him, he will be the kind who will have worked all day and be as glad as you to sit back and absorb a little quick relaxation from a glass and then eat, quaffing immortality and joy. He will if possible be your husband or your own true love, and you will find in this sudden quiet and peacefulness something that has sometimes seemed much too far from you both, lately. [I consider myself more fortunate than most women in that I know several good drinking companions of my own sex. They are for the most part well past sixty, a significant fact in the study of Alcohol in Modern Society, I imagine.… The best of them, eighty-two last Christmas, has taught me much of both self-control and sensual pleasure from her enjoyment of a weekly glass of dry champagne.]
If you (and occasionally Z and A, but never everyone in between) are used to hard liquor, you would do well to stick to it, for a time at least. In comparison with bar-prices, it costs very little to buy an ordinary but reputable gin by the gallon jug. [There are few such jugs, but in spite of local laws most good liquor stores will still give discounts on case-lots of fifths or quarts.] Dry vermouth from California or New York or South America are equally reputable and not at all ordinary. These two mixed knowingly with a little ice make a mighty passable Martini by any standards, and are doubly titillating drunk for a change in the airy sanctum of your own or a good friend’s room.
Whiskey drinkers, whose name (to coin a phrase again) is legion, will drink Scotch, or bourbon, or rye, or blended spirits. They rarely admit being able to swallow more than one of the varieties. If you are in this general group, either swear off or choose a brew you can afford, and then save enough money until you can buy a case of it. (All this, granted that you are a moderate drinker-for-pleasure, and not a thirsty unhappy soul who must empty every bottle willy-nilly to drown some worm in the brain.)
Liquor by the case is generally about ten per cent less expensive than by the bottle, and generally it disappears at least ten per cent faster, so you must gauge your own purse and proclivities. If you can accept a case loose in the pantry with equanimity, use it sparingly but well, on yourself and your favorite friends.
Have a good drink before dinner, in comparative peace. Try drinking about one part whiskey to two of plain water, without ice. Old-time drinkers swear that is the only way to treat a good liquor, and after the first shock, when your palate expected a cold watered mouthful, you will probably agree. It is a better drink, and it will make a surprising difference not only in your digestion but your budget. Both will be stronger for the lack of ice and synthetic bubbles.
If you are even more haunted by the wolf at the door and still like your toddy, cut yourself down with some brutality to the starkness of sherry [… or a good vermouth]. At first it will seem pale, innocuous, a child’s tipple. After a week you will look forward to it, and if you are sensible and fortunate enough to have fallen on a decent if much-maligned California bottle, you will tot up your budget with some relief.
Sherry by the bottle, naturally, costs more than sherry by the gallon. Sherry by the gallon, in the Eastern states at least, is often shameful. Try to find a good merchant.… Italians usually have a nice feeling for the fortified wines … and if you can trust him at all you can trust him not to give you a jug half full of chemicals. Then decant it yourself; you can buy a ten-cent funnel and use the washed vermouth bottles from your occasional Martinis. A gallon will last a long time and should cost up or down around a dollar, in spite of what the self-styled connoisseurs will say. [I cannot believe this was true, even an eon of nine years ago! Surely I meant “quart,” not “gallon” … and I still do.]
An agreeable drink with a surprising lift to it is the following:
HALF-AND-HALF COCKTAIL
½ cup dry vermouth
½ cup dry sherry
½ lemon
ice
dash of angostura bitters if desired
Pour vermouth and sherry into shaker over cracked ice. Add lemon juice and bitters. Stir well, pour into glasses and top with the rest of the lemon rind.
Little salty crackers or a bowl of freshly toasted nuts are good with sherry, or with Half-and-Half. These drinks can be served in the old Martini glasses, and afterwards you can have a china pitcher or a carafe of wine on the table.
If your sherry merchant is honest about the sherry he will probably be honest about other wines as well, and you should with impunity be able to fill a gallon jug for little more than a dollar with good characterful red or white wine, not notable but not infamous. [This is possible only if you know the vintner and can go to his cellar, jug in hand. But there are several reputable blended table wines available now, for about three dollars a gallon. They made an occasional ceremonial bottle of fine wine taste even finer.] It should be the kind that makes good food taste better, and leave a nice clean budding on your tongue, and makes the next morning seem fortunate rather than a catastrophe.
It is surprising how many confirmed likkadrinkas blossom and unwind and emerge from their professionally hard shells on such a liquid accompaniment to a good supper. Some insist later that it is the shock to their system … the sudden shift from grain to grape … that has caused the change. Most of them, any subtle host can see, are secretly or unconsciously relieved not to have to lap up their usual quota of pre-meal highballs or cocktails.
A pleasant apéritif, as well as a good chaser for a short quick whiskey, as well again for a fine supper drink, is beer … if you like it. Beer in big cities can be sent out for in a bucket to the corner pub, even from Park Avenue, but probably even on Park Avenues, in New York or elsewhere, it is better in bottles.
It should be bought by the case, because it is cheaper that way and easier to have delivered. You should save the tops. (I cannot think just why, but I am sure that something is done with them. The beer-man would know.) And of course you should save the bottles, instead of doing several other obvious things with them.
The present war will probably affect such fantastic problems as the one involving the transportation of lager from Milwaukee to Sunset Beach, California, and in the main it may be a good thing.
There are a thousand small honest breweries in this country which because they have been too poor and localized to compete with the big boys have been forced to close, or else operate under famous names while they turned out yeast, or hops, or some other important but unnamed ingredients of the main company’s beer. Now, with trains full of soldiers and supplies rather than pale ale, perhaps people far from the great breweries will turn again to their local beer factories, and discover, as their fathers did thirty years ago, that a beer carried quietly three miles is better than one shot across three thousand on a fast freight. [I am sorry that this did not happen. War seemingly made it easier and cheaper than ever to drink Milwaukee beer in Sunset Beach.]
Beer is a good drink. (“Teetotalers seem to die the same as others,” A.P. Herbert wrote once between sessions in the House of Commons. “So what’s the use of knocking off the beer?”) Wine is a good drink, if you can get it, and now as never before in this country you can get it with confidence that it will be honest and full-bodied and all the other things that even grudging tasters say about a decent drink of it.
Hard liquors like gin and whiskey are more difficult to get, especially if you are thinking of economy, but they can still be found (circa 1942). [As I remember, the worst result of a War II block was a flood of Argentine gin. Sensitive Martini-boys and Gibson-girls still shudder.…They took to tequila and vodka, but only in desperation and fortunately for only a few weeks.] If you cannot afford them (and will admit it, which is rare), you might try to find an honest but unscrupulous druggist and buy a quart of good alcohol. Then, armed with this recipe, which stems via a Junior Leaguer from Ohio through Tiflis in what was once known as Georgia (Europe), you can make a mighty powerful drink which will treat you honestly and please you meanwhile.
A VODKA
[This is still a good recipe, and worthy of individual study and experimentation. My uncle Walter, the most accomplished early-morning drinker I have ever known, says it is superlative in tomato juice.]
1 quart water
1 teaspoon glycerin or sugar
1 lemon rind, shaved
½ orange rind, shaved
1 quart alcohol
Simmer first four ingredients very gently about 20 minutes. Remove from stove. Add alcohol and cover instantly with a tight lid. Let cool and strain.
To make a very acceptable liqueur add more fruit shavings and a spoonful or so of honey.
A Mr. Furnas, who writes more wisely and less pompously than most men about other men, bread and destiny in a book called Man, Bread and Destiny, discusses at some length the various prescriptions throughout the ages for love potions. He mentions all the known ones, like Spanish fly and pork-chops-with-pepper, and a great many less prevalent charms. Finally he decides, and almost with a sigh of relief, that probably the best excitant in the world is sweet music and a moderate amount of alcohol! [Just lately I heard a modern lover state his vision of pure bliss, unconscious of his parody of Omar Khayyam: “A horn of gin, a good cigar, and you, Babe.”]
When he writes so sensibly, it is hard not to say, along with the Governor of South Carolina who was talking to the Governor of North Carolina, that it’s a long time between drinks, especially when there is sweet music and your love and good liquor. Then you can raise a glass to the wolf with impunity and a courage that is real, no matter how alcoholic, and know that even if you regret it tomorrow, you have been a man without qualms either amorous or budgetary tonight. [I believe, even more strongly now than then, that the important thing about drinking is that it be done for pleasure. Then, and then only, the sad fear of alcoholism never rises from its slough to haunt us, and neither our manners nor our digestions can be criticized.]