Valentine's Day is all about couples in love but what about bachelors and bachelorettes?
Well they can celebrate with this cocktail from 1910 called a bachelor's rose or
bachelorette's rose if you like.
We'll also touch on the tradition of sending Valentine's Day cards both the nice kind,
and the not so nice kind this time on Drinking History.
So this drink comes from the 1910 edition of Jack's Manual by J.A Grohusko,
and it includes sloe gin and that's s-l-o-e, not s-l-o-w. It's gin made with sloe berries,
and in England it's very often homemade but they do have several commercial varieties.
This one that I'm using is Hayman's from London, they've been around since 1863
but there are several others that are very, very good but let's give this one a try.
Just a bit there.
That is nice.
So sloe gin
sometimes gets a bad reputation for being really sweet
and it is sweet. It has this kind of plum jamminess to it that is really, really great.
Very, very fruity very fruit forward but
because it's gin it still has that kind of
clean crisp finish that you expect with a gin so it's not sickly sweet,
though it can be but this one is not sickly sweet and especially when it's mixed with
sour ingredients like it's going to be in this cocktail.
Now it can be kind of hard to find in a lot of liquor stores at least here in the US.
It is becoming more popular but if you have trouble finding it
I'm going to put a link to this one in the description where I got it from Curiada but
like I said there are lots of brands that are actually quite good. What you want to stay away from
is any brand that is made in the US because they typically use a relative of the sloe berry and
just go with one that's made in England.
Bachelor's rose: juice of a half a lemon, juice of half a lime,
juice of half orange, white of egg, 25% raspberry syrup, 75% sloe gin.
Fill glass with cracked ice, shake well, strain and serve.
So it's real simple, we just put all the citrus juice here
and don't forget it's upside down. It's the exact opposite way that I very often do it.
You get more juice that way, though you don't actually need a ton of juice for this.
Our citrus tends to be a little bit larger than it probably was at this time so don't
don't go overboard, otherwise it's just gonna be real sour.
The orange doesn't even fit in there so I'm just squeezing it and getting orange juice all over myself.
Then add the egg white, this is going to make it so it's a nice frothy drink.
Then we'll do about a half ounce of raspberry syrup, mind you it is not raspberry liqueur, it's just raspberry syrup.
I'm using Monin, I'll put a link in the description if you want that but there are several that you can find
at a lot of liquor stores. Then we'll do about one and a half ounces of the sloe gin.
Add some ice,
and shake.
[rattle rattle]
Then just strain it into a beautiful glass like this Nick & Nora glass. I love these glasses.
It ends up being real foamy on the top so it's this wonderful pink color it's
bachelor's rose. That's where they get the name I guess, clever.
Let's give it a try.
I love that froth.
Yeah that's nice. That-
the sweetness is really dampened with all of that citrus.
You still get the flavors though. You get the raspberry, you get that
that jammy kind of plum from the sloe gin without the sweetness.
I mean it is a sweet drink,
I like sweet drinks but it's not as sweet as a lot of cocktails
that you're going to get at a bar today. There is a little acidity right at the very end
which is nice. Oh and then it it actually separates very well so you get that
that foam on the top and then just a beautiful pink hue there all over the bottom.
And it's kind of perfect with that sweet and sour for our topic today which is Valentine's and vinegar Valentines.
Valentine's day, the holiday incarnation of romance and if not passion
then restrained publicly acceptable admiration.
Kind of the perfect holiday for the Victorians,
especially with the popularization of the valentine card and the uniform Penny Post,
better known as the first postage stamp.
This made it possible to express your feelings of esteem to someone without having to be
in their physical presence and so in England leading up to Valentine's Day in 1840
Valentine cards went flying through the mail at such a rate that they had to give the postmen
a special stipend for refreshments to keep their energy up during the long hours,
and many who were used to doing their route on foot had to go by omnibus.
"The letters in St Valentine so vastly will amount, Postmen may judge them by the lot, they won't have time to count;
they must bring round spades and measure to poor lovesick souls deliver them by bushels the same as they do coals...
and ladies pleasure will evince instead of any fuss, to have their lover's letters all delivered with a bus!"
Though as popular as they were becoming not everyone liked them.
In The New York Times in 1856 an article read
"Our beaux and belles are satisfied with a few miserable lines, neatly written upon fine paper,
or else they purchase a printed Valentine with verses ready made, some of which are costly,
and many of which are cheap and indecent...
the custom with us has no useful feature,
and the sooner it is abolished the better."
Yeah I'm guessing that author didn't get a Valentine
or if he did then it was a vinegar Valentine.
See vinegar Valentines became popular basically the same time
that regular Valentines did but where a regular Valentine's card is to express your admiration
and affection for someone, the vinegar Valentine did the exact opposite.
"Of little snobs I've seen a few, but none that I like less than you;
this gentle hint I hope you'll take, and eyes at me no more you'll make."
Many of them had these vicious little mean-spirited poems attached
and then the artwork was wonderfully ugly and yet absolutely fantastic in my personal opinion
from 150 years removed.
What I really appreciate is that they were very well balanced between being mean to men and mean to women,
some of my favorites include "Handsome is as handsome does, which leaves a chance for you,
since in appearance you are like a baboon in a zoo.
In prison you ought to be doing some time, for to wear such a face must be surely a crime.
If you 'mongst gorillas had chance to be born, they would have disowned you with loathing and scorn;
for a monkey - no matter how homely a brute
when placed beside you would be ranked as a 'bute'."
And they didn't just attack your physical appearance but your personality traits and hobbies as well.
They would often criticize men for being vain and boring and criticize women for reading novels
or having the audacity to want to vote.
Or of course simply talking.
"Pray take an honest friend's advice or you will have to pay the price.
Your idle tongue must cease to wag, or it will wear this warning tag."
Now you might think that these were sent in jest or relegated to a small part of the population but
they weren't. They were sent in all sincerity
and were very, very popular. In fact eventually they became so popular that they made them
not only to send to people that you didn't like as as lovers,
but also to just people you didn't like in general.
Your doctor or your lawyer, your surgeon.
"To the surgeon. Ho! Ho! Old saw bones, here you come,
yes, when the rebels whack us, you are always ready with your traps, to mangle saw, and hack us."
Eventually they became so vicious that the post office stopped delivering them especially
when it became popular to send them COD, or collect on delivery,
meaning that the recipient had to pay a penny for the privilege of being insulted.
They actually remained popular all through the 19th century,
and well into the 20th century when they started to become rather libelous.
One from the 1930s accuses the recipient of being a tax dodger.
"You spend your waking hours, in finding ways to duck; the paying of an honest tax,
and rumbling 'oer your luck."
Now by the 40s and 50s they had started to disappear but
next time someone tells you that it was just better in the good old days before Twitter and internet trolls,
when everyone was just nicer to each other-
you just remind them that their great-grandparents
might have been perfectly okay saying
"Hey lover boy, the place for you is home upon the shelf,
cause the only one who'd kiss you is a jackass like yourself!"
So here's hoping none of you receive a vinegar Valentine this year, but if you do
go ahead and make yourself a bachelor or bachelorette's rose
to ease the pain,
and I will see you next time on Drinking History. <3