What Dickens Drank: Historic Summer Cocktails
Taught by Sarah Lohman
Sarah Lohman is a culinary historian and the author of the bestselling books Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods and Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. She focuses on the history of food as a way to access the stories of diverse Americans. Endangered Eating was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by Amazon’s Editors, Food & Wine, and Adam Gopnik on the Milk Street podcast. It was a finalist for the Nach Waxman Prize for Food & Drink Scholarship and winner of the Ohioana Library Book Prize for Nonfiction. Lohman’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and NPR. Lohman has lectured across the country, from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC to The Culinary Historians of Southern California
Imagine you’re a tourist to America in 1842: The summer heat of New York is sweltering, but that’s alright. It’s the perfect excuse to indulge in America’s greatest invention: The Cock-Tail.
Charles Dickens was one such tourist, meandering his way around the U.S., recording all that he ate and drank. In Boston, he said: "...the bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people stand and smoke, and lounge about, all the evening dropping in and out as the humor takes them. There too the stranger is initiated into the mysteries of Gin-sling, Cocktail, Sangaree, Mint Julep, Sherry-cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare drinks.”
In this class, we’ll make three early cocktails: The Mint Julep, The Sherry-Cobbler, and the original Cock-Tail. We’ll discuss the history of each of these drinks, create them step-by-step, and then beat the heat by sampling the frosty fruits of our labor.
You so need to be 21 to take this class. It meets at the Brainery, 515 Court Street in BK.
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