In 1926, Norman Hume Anthony, editor of Judge magazine and later of Life, chose to write a recipe book of mixed drinks. And because alcoholic beverages were illegal in the United States at this time, he wisely chose to pen this under “Judge Jr.”
Anthony seems to have been a very witty dude. In the introduction, he writes, “Like the orange, I owe my success to Prohibition, and like a great many other people I never thought of taking a drink before Prohibition.”
The book was titled Here’s How!, published in early 1927 by the Leslie-Judge Company. It contains 51 mixed drink recipes (not all mixed drinks are properly called cocktails), and it is made available online by the incredible EUVS Digital Collection. Which is a good thing, because the physical copies I’ve seen for sale run over $400.
I thought it would be fun to explore the drinks in the book, and to try actually making some of them. Looking through the recipes, I noticed that many of them call for “Gordon water.” A little online inquiring suggests that “Gordon water” is another term for gin, probably deriving from Gordon’s London Dry Gin which has been around since 1769.
So let’s have a good time, and to quote Lord Grantham, down with Prohibition!
The Road Backward 