More Notes on Ingredients:

All the ingredients in Ensslin's book pretty much can be divided into a few categories.

1. Straightforward, easy to find, and not too expensive. For instance, the juice of half a lemon, or dry gin.

2. Specific, easy to find, and super expensive. (Chartreuse, or absinthe.)

3. Impossible to find, or even understand. What is calisaya, for instance? No idea.

4. Tricky.

Here I include, for instance, Cuban rum. I'm going to go ahead and use Bacardi for every recipe that asks for Cuban rum, even though I don't like it much and it's made in Puerto Rico. During Ensslin's era, I'm reasonably confident that Bacardi was the signature Cuban rum, which explains it getting its own "Bacardi cocktail." (Identical to the "Cuban cocktail.")There may It's no longer Cuban, of course, and I have no idea if it contemporary Bacardi resembles 1916 Bacardi. So, let's not worry too much about it.

Maraschino. There may be a reference to a maraschino cherry in here somewhere, but for the most part, Ensslin calls for various liquid measures of maraschino, never modified by helpful words like "liqueur" or "syrup." There is a liqueur, which I think may be near impossible to find in the US. There is also a syrup ala grenadine, but that just seems to be artificially cherry flavored gunk that interests me little. I may try to make my own (Difford suggests making one's own grenadine by making a syrup out of straight pomegranate juice and sugar, which is apparently what grenadine used to be before slowly being replaced by red corn syrup.) or I may try to get some Italian flavor syrup like you'd make into an Italian soda. I'm not sure.

So complicated! And costly!

UPDATES on some ingredients:

1. Old Tom Gin is available at Rouse's, at least in one variety, and it isn't outrageously priced. It's about a dollar more than most of the nicer London dry gins, like Bombay or Tanqueray. Sigh of relief.

2. Orange bitters. None at Rouse's, which perplexes me. There were lots of other weird flavors of bitters, but no orange. So what to do about that, huh?

3. Curacao. There are various orange liqueurs that a person can grab, but the only curacao at Rouse's (or at least the only thing that goes ahead and calls itself curacao) is Leroux blue curacao. Leroux is one of those weird brands of cheap flavored stuff. I'm not happy about this, particularly, but I went with it. Curacao is used in a number of recipes, but often sparingly, so I'm not terribly concerned. But, I do want to be as accurate as possible.

4. Dubonnet. I know it comes in more than one color, but Rouse's only had the red. Not sure what to do about that, since Ensslin I think never refers to it by color. I think it's kind of like vermouth and comes in red and white both. I seem to recall drinking some white Dubonnet years ago from my corner liquor store in Providence.

[EDITS]

I've made a few decisions based on limited research. One is that Maraschino almost certainly means the liqueur, so I'll have to find some. Dubonnet seems to be most widely available in rouge, so that's good. So, some things solved, or at least better understood.