FoodNet

A bachelors cupboard

1906

Page 67

Presented as published in 1906. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
GLASSES Fancy runs riot in the selection of wine- glasses. From the plain crystal to the fanciful Vene- tian or Austrian glasses, with their wondrous coloring and shapes that an orchid might envy, there is a wide choice. But unless a bachelor has a mint of money, he had best eschew colored and fanciful glasses and hold to the thin, clear glass, or perhaps finely-cut glass, as plain as possible. He should have for water, mint juleps, and the like, a goblet of regulation size. A punch glass holding two to the pint comes next in grade, and then a glass holding three to the pint for hot whiskies, sours, etc. The saucer-shaped champagne glass is the most artistic, although the hollow stem is equally popular — possibly more so. Cocktail glasses, special sherry glasses, and glasses for clarets and sau- ternes with green or red bowls as fancy dictates are necessary to the menage, and the list ends with glasses for pousse cafes and cordials, " pony " glasses for brandy, beer goblets — unless he elects to use the steins 165 A BACHELOR'S CUPBOARD Correct Wines for all Occasions of his college days — and lemonade glasses for those mixed " ladies' delights," etc. The bachelor who has a menage will have his side- board well stocked with the necessary decanters, cor- dial sets, etc., but for the impecunious bachelor or he who lives in his studio nothing more handy was ever invented than the " Bachelor's Cabinet," with its sft- companiment of decanters, mixing glasses, tiny ice-box, and all the requisites for a convivial evening at home. Even when one is reduced to standing his beer bot- tles outside on the window ledge to cool and has to dust furtively the steins he has taken from their hooks, he need not deplore the lack of more expensive bever- ages or the absence of cut glass and champagne. It's not so much what one drinks as with whom and where he drinks it. " You look at what I drink, and not at my thirst/* ON How often does a man hasten to ** put SERVING beer on ice " when a friend drops in of an BEER evening? Yet this is contrary to cus- tom in the Old World, where one frequently sees the German sit for a few moments with his hand about his glass to bring the contents to the proper tempera- ture before drinking. Beer should not be served very cold, as excessive chilliness destroys the fine flavor it should have and renders it injurious. Beer should not be served di- i66 A BACHELOR'S CUPBOARD Correct Wines for all Occasions rectly after it has been shaken in any manner. Set it in the ice-box, if you like, but do not, I implore you, put it directly upon the ice. It's a fine drink, as Dan Daly affirmed in his song: *' Beer, beer, glorious beer! Fill yourselves right up to here (me neck)! Down wid a pail of it! Drink a good dale of it ! — Glorious, glorious beer! "