When I was writing my book, A Jazz Age Murder in Northwest Indiana (History Press), about Nettie Diamond, a wealthy widow and pharmacist who was murdered by her fifth husband, a much younger bootlegger named Harry in Indiana Harbor on Valentine’s Day 1923, one of the things I learned was that it was relatively easy to get a permit during Prohibition to buy medicinal alcohol and distribute it.
That may be why I’m finding a new book, Lost Recipes of Prohibition: Notes from A Bootlegger’s Manual by Matthew Rowley (The Countryman Press 2015; $27.95) to be a fascinating read.
Rowley, who describes himself as specializing in folk distilling and the manufacture and distribution of illicit spirits, was given an old book titled The Candle and The Flame, The Work of George Sylvester Viereck. The interior didn’t contain any poems by Viereck, a popular poet up until his pro-German sensibilities during World War I made him a pariah in the U.S. Instead, the book’s once blank pages contained a plethora of handwritten distilled spirit recipes procured and preserved by a New York pharmacist named Victor Alfred Lyon.
As for Harry, he wasn’t supposed to sell alcohol for non-medicinal purposes like he did—by adding real spirit company labels to his own bottles…but that was Harry who also. According to Rowley, many pharmacists made alcoholic concoctions to help ailing (or just plain thirsty) customers and many distilleries were allowed to continue to operate to provide product. Rowley points out that during Prohibition, the sale of sacramental wine went sky high as people suddenly became much more religious.
Lyon’s recipes were collected from a variety of sources and at the time he was gathering them, some were a century or so old. Rowley organized the recipes in chapters such as Absinthe, Cordials, and Bitters and Gin; Compounding Spirits and Gin, Whiskey and Rum.
Less a cookbook than a history and how-to of spirit making, Rowley does include many of Lyon’s recipes from a simple cocktail that silent screen movie star Mary Pickford enjoyed to the complex (and supersized) such as one for Rumessenz which calls for gallons of ingredients and was used by wholesalers, barkeepers, importers and exporters to make an essence of rum they could use for adding the aroma and tastes of rum to a batch of plain alcohol creating a higher profit margin. That’s similar to what Harry Diamond did as well and at his trial he told the court he made about $20,000 a month from bootlegging.
Here’s one of the book’s recipes.
Lanizet: Sour Mash Cajun Anisette
3 quarts water
25 ounces sugar
½ teaspoon anise oil
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon red food coloring
3 cups bourbon or Tennessee whiskey
5 to 7 pounds ice
Pour 1 ½ quarts of the water in a medium stockpot. Note the depth of the liquid. Later, you will boil the syrup to this height. For now, pour in the remaining water and all the sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Lower the heat and simmer until the liquid reduces to 1 ½ quarts, 50 or 60 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat.
While the syrup is simmering, sterilize five new or well-scrubbed 1-pint canning jars in a deep pot or canning pot. Leave the jars in the hot water until you’re ready to use them. Wash and boil the lids and rings according to the manufacturer’s directions.
When the syrup reaches that 1.5-lquart mark, turn off the heat and remove the pot from heat. Stir in the anise oil, vanilla and food coloring until thoroughly mixed, then stir in the whiskey. Remove the jars from their hot water bath with tongs. Place the jars (don’t touch with your bare hands) on a wooden surface or folded towels and immediately pour the crimson liquid into the jars up to 1⁄2 inch from the tops. Wipe any dribbles or spills from the rims with a clean, damp cloth and place hot lids on top with sealing compound down; screw on the metal rings firmly but not too tightly.
Line your sink with a damp dish towel; it will prevent the hot jars from breaking when they touch the cool surface. Immediately place the jars upright in the sink, then slowly fill it with cool tap water so it covers the jars. As the jars cool, you’ll hear a series of metallic pops and pings; that’s a vacuum forming in each jar. When the jars are cool to the touch, after 5 to 10 minutes, place them upright in a tub of ice, with ice to top off the jars, to cool the anisette as quickly as possible. Once contents of jars are well chilled, about 1 hour, remove the jars from the ice. Label and date the jars, then store upright in a cool, dark place.
Yield: 5 pints
From Lost Recipes of Prohibition.
(Lorena Jones Books 2017; $40) was just released this fall. And in keeping with the eclectic concepts of his restaurants, which he describes as speaking to a place and not a time, it’s definitely different–an amalgam of recipes, insights, reminiscences, paeans to local food producers and autobiographical. It even contains poems.
ings of the Underground Railroad. Ghosts of the Midwest (Indiana University Press), is due out August 1. Researching the book took me into the small towns of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan where ghost stories abound about UGRR. Though I never saw a ghost myself, The Courtyards housed in a building dating back to the 1820s were said to be a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Last November, Hipso published Murano’s follow-up novel, Valentina Goldman Ships Out, to even greater success. The book exposed another side of the beloved Valentina, vulnerable after the unexpected death of her husband. Despite tragedy, though, hilarity still ensues, as is always the case when Valentina (and in this case, her mother) is involved. Indeed, Valentina’s mother arrives on her doorstep to whisk her away on a 12-day Mediterranean cruise full of unexpected detours. If you’ve always longed to go on a cruise, ship out with Valentina. And if you’ve never wanted to go on a cruise, go anyway. You’ll likely find yourself altern
ately delighted and surprised by her quirky encounters at sea and alluring ports of call. In tightly wound language shimmering with wit and longing, Valentina Goldman Ships Out is a moving portrait of a woman looking for answers and coping with loss, even when the waters are deep.
(Harper/HarperCollins 2016 $26.99) which was just named as one of the 100 best books of 2016 by the New York Times,
When David McAninch first moved to Plaisance du Gers, a small village in Gascony, with his wife Michele and their young daughter, Charlotte, he was going full-force Francophile by indulging a dream he’d nourished for years—to become part of French village life, a move he chronicles in Duck Season: Eating, Drinking, and Other Misadventures in Gascony, France’s Last Best Place (Harper 2017; $28.99). McAninch had lived in Paris and the South of France at various times in his life, but Gascony with its traditions centered around what was grown on the land or made locally, was in some ways like place time had overlooked. The nearest McDonald’s was in Toulouse, a two-hour drive away, very little processed food was available and tourists seldom seemed to find their way to this part of Southwestern France.
me Paula Wolfert’s The Cooking of Southwest France: Recipes from France’s Magnificent Rustic Cuisine. 