Ted Haigh

Haigh owns a couple of cocktail sites and is the curator for a cocktail museum. This spiral bound book is a gold mine of cocktails that dropped out of rotation due to hard-to-find ingredients, bad names or just being viewed as out-dated by younger generations of bartenders. A few featured here, like the Moscow Mule, French 75, and The Fogcutter, have recently climbed their way out of obscurity, but most remain forgotten. Have you ever heard of a Leatherneck, a Mamie Taylor, The Secret Cocktail or a Three To One?
This isn't just a book of recipes. Each cocktail comes with it's history of when it was created, often with the exact person and place, the original ingredients and how well it was received by the public at the time. Haigh is a sharp-witted and charming guide, and the amount of research is remarkable. This is a book you'd keep not only for getting away from the mainstream margaritas and sangrias, but to find a recipe that uses less common ingredients like applejack or orange curacao. Each cocktail has a really nice photo too. Very interesting and handy.… (more)

This is a late addition to my cocktail book collection and despite being somewhat familiar with a lot of the cocktails (thanks Cocktail Virgin/Slut!) it's a great resource. It lays flat with the spiral binding, the index is useful, the resources at the back have good information on finding a lot of the ingredients (or enough description to make substitutions easy), and the cocktails themselves are delicious. I had some friends over and made 3 or 4 of them and they were all great. Looking forward to making even more drinks from it in the future.… (more)