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HomeShop at BookSurgeEducationBilingual EducationWings of Cherubs: The Saga of the Rediscovery of Pisco Punch Old San Francisco's Mystery Drink |
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4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Entertaining historical fiction followed by an excellent research paper Jun 07, 2009
By cocktail sage
"cocktail sage"
The book is written in three parts - the tale (178 pages), the recipe (3 pages), and the addendum (24 pages).
The tale is a fictionalized account of the author's search for the recipe, in which he and his wife visit many: places, people, documents, and relics associated with the history of the drink. The narrator often `time travels' when he touches an historic artifact, and we are treated to vivid realistic and well researched descriptions of former times and imagined conversations with important historical figures - "important" to the quest for the recipe.
The history of the punch starts more than a century before the actual invention of the recipe, beginning with the start of the production of Pisco in Peru. Along the way it explains relevant things about the founding of the city of San Francisco, San Francisco's maritime trade, and how Pisco came to be exported in quantity to the thirsty in northern California. It talks about how it is likely that various Pisco drinks came to the bay area, and how they were adopted by saloon keepers, and it traces a likely evolution from them into the famous Pisco Punch. No one will be surprised that the tale contains many many discussions of how wonderful and healthful Pisco is, and Pisco is being drunk on almost every page of "the tale".
The narrative can be slow in spots, and is a bit confusing. It is immensely informative - if a bit long. There are half a dozen historic drink recipes in the margins and huge numbers of illustrations and photographs of pre- and post- earthquake San Francisco. It also contains the complete text of the quotes of the famous and the eloquent who have written about Pisco Punch. To give you an idea of the depth of research, the narrator looks what survives of import records from the customs house, and purchase and shipping invoices.
After the fictionalized `tale', there are three pages that explain how to make the punch, clearly laid out with lots of photographs. To me it looks just like a bar set-up from a Tiki-bar - the recipe for the bartender is "this many ounces from bottle one, and this many ounces from bottle two, etc." Then there is the recipe for bottle 1, and the recipes for bottles two through five.
The addendum. The addendum is probably what you expected that the book would be - which is a concise, well organized discussion of the history of the relevant bars, owners, bar staff - who worked where when, and who was likely or unlikely to have disclosed what to whom, what is known about the business and owner that is relevant to puzzling out the recipe. The addendum was written in the form of a research paper for a California historical society.
There is a well researched discussion of why it is likely that the Bronson 1973 "Secrets of the Pisco Punch Revealed" article (easily found on the internet) which contains the "John Lannes" recipe is not likely to have been the famous / authentic recipe, but likely to have been a competitor's best attempt to copy the real article. After you compare the Lannes recipe with the "Wings of Cherubs" recipe, I think you are more likely to make (and drink) the "Wings of Cherubs" recipe.
While discussions of secret ingredients on the internet center on 'gum arabic' which Bronson believed to have been the missing link, the author reveals that there was another ingredient. There is a highly entertaining, well reasoned but entirely speculative discussion of what the `secret ingredient' actually might have been.
The book contains first rate cocktail scholarship, shows an immense amount of research on the part of the author, and gives a broad historic background and context for pisco drinking in the bay area.
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