The Great Mint Julep Controversy of 1933

Eddie of the Astor (L), Irvin S. Cobb (R), and
Heywood Broun (seated) at the Infamous
Mint Julep Trial, July 1933

What's the proper liquor for use in a mint julep? Bourbon whiskey or rye? What about rum or brandy, or even gin? 

Most drinkers today would immediately answer, "Bourbon, of course," but it wasn't always this way. Back in the 19th century, any one of those liquors might be found in a julep. Rum, in fact, was the original base, though it was supplanted by brandy in the early days of the Republic. Whiskey rose to julep prominence only after the Civil War, and Kentuckians and Marylanders debated hotly whether Bourbon or rye was the proper variety for juleps.

Last year in the Charleston City Paper, I speculated that the near-ubiquity of Bourbon as the liquor of choice for mint juleps today was largely due to the Kentucky Derby, at which juleps have been the signature cocktail for over a century. But, the more I look into matters, the more I suspect that the Kentucky-born newspaper man and humorist Irvin S. Cobb might actually share a lot of the blame.

In July 1933, still several months before the repeal of Prohibition, Cobb challenged “Eddie of the Astor”, a well-known bartender from the Hotel Astor, to a mint julep showdown. The challenge was sparked when Cobb overheard Eddie say that a proper julep should be made with brandy. “Brandy?” Cobb reportedly said. “Putting brandy in a mint julep is like putting ketchup in iced tea.” The contest was set for July 13th at Cobb’s Park Avenue apartment.

As late as 1933, it seems, there was still a rich diversity of liquors employed in the julep world. Cobb’s challenge, columnist H. Allen Smith noted, originated out of “a controversy over the potability of the Kentucky mint julep as compared with all other forms of julep.” 

H. L. Mencken, the famed Baltimore journalist and critic, upon hearing of the contest, harrumphed that both Cobb and Eddie were wrong. “In Maryland we use rye whiskey. Bourbon puts too much meat on the consumer,” a perhaps not so veiled dig at Cobb's substantial girth. Mencken declined to participate, saying he had to head back home to Baltimore “to watch the hanging of a gentleman who put Bourbon whiskey in a julep.”

Cobb enlisted Heywood Broun, the popular columnist for the New York World-Telegram, to serve as the contest's judge. For his “Kentucky julep”, Cobb broke out a bottle of Belmont Bourbon distilled in 1901 and obtained from Louisville’s Pendennis Club. Eddie of the Astor was given a bottle of brandy  by Cobb and, when he requested a bit of Jamaican rum for his “Cosmopolitan julep”, he was provided with the closest thing Cobb could find in his basement: Bacardi.

In alternating succession, Broun downed three of Cobb’s Bourbon juleps and three of Eddie’s brandy ones, then retired to a bedroom for a nap. He awoke a half hour later, fortified himself with three cups of coffee, then banged out his decision on Cobb’s typewriter. “Judgment is rendered in favor of Mr. Cobb and the mint julep compounded out of Kentucky Bourbon,” he declared. “Eddie of the Astor is guilty of a heresy in using brandy as a base.” He took the opportunity to take a swipe at rye, too, declaring it “Communistic, Atheistic, and against the dignity of man” to commit “such gross violations of the code as using rye whiskey, or that great abomination, the gin julep.”

Eddie of the Astor, for his part, took the defeat graciously, though he did note that he was a little out of practice, thanks to the whole Prohibition thing, and added, “I wish the press to know that it was not really Mr. Cobb that won, but really his liquor.” He did have  a point: it’s sort of hard to compete with 32-year-old Bourbon when all you’ve got is a bottle of Prohibition-era brandy and some bootleg Bacardi.

Predictably, newspapers in Maryland and in New Orleans cried foul. Marshall Ballard, the editor of the New Orleans Item, protested that what Cobb had actually created was not a mint julep but a mint smash. “Both are good,” he declared, “but the julep demands more solicitude and time.”

With a smash, Ballard explained, either Bourbon or rye is put in a glass with sugar, mint leaves, and crushed ice and agitated with a spoon until the mint leaves are crushed and the outside of the glass coated with a fine frost. For a julep, “you soak as much mint as possible in as much Bourbon as you can afford for about three weeks.” The resulting greenish brown liquor is stored in a jug and mixed with ice and sugar just before drinking, and is, Ballard claimed, a “slightly smoother and mellower product” than the quick-made smash.

Cobb's contest may not have decided the issue once and for all, but in the wake of Repeal more and more Americans turned to Bourbon when stirring up a frosty julep. I, for one, am partial to rye, but almost a full century of Kentucky propaganda puts me decidedly in the minority.

Small Barrel Failures

Barrels Aging in the Buffalo Trace Warehouse
Courtesy Buffalo Trace Distillery

A little interesting news coming out of Frankfurt, Kentucky: Buffalo Trace Distillery has been experimenting with making "small barrel" bourbon, and they've now declared those experiments to be, well, a failure.

An ordinary bourbon barrel (in which, by law, corn whiskey must age at least two years before being able to be called straight bourbon whiskey) is 53 gallons in capacity. Starting in 2006, Buffalo Trace took smaller barrels of 5, 10, and 15 gallons and filled them with the same mash bill and aged them side-by-side to see what would happen.

What happens, it appears, is something akin to cooking a burger on too hot of a grill or a pork roast in too hot an oven. In whiskey aging, its the barrel itself providing the "heat", the charred wood filtering out the congeners from the distillate and imparting a dark color and smoky, mellow flavor to the whiskey. "As expected," Master Distiller Harlen Wheatley noted in the press release announcing the results, "the smaller 5 gallon barrel aged faster than the 15 gallon version." But faster isn't necessarily better. "It's as if they all bypassed a step in the aging process and just never gained the depth of flavor that we expect from our bourbons."

The distillers sampled the progress of the experiment each year, and finally this year threw in the towel, deciding the small barrel versions just weren't going to get any better.

It must be to their chagrin, for if distillers were able to use smaller barrels to speed the aging process but still keep the quality then they would be in a better position to react to changes in the market--like the recent resurgence in rye popularity that has left distillers and wholesalers with a shortage of stock.  When your product has to sit in a warehouse for four or more years before being ready to sell, there's not much you can do to ramp production quickly to meet the rising demand.

For now, it seems the 53-gallon barrel--and lots of time--remain the formula for success.

I am HUGE in Vietnam

Cookshop in Huế, Vietnam. Courtesy Thomas Schoch. 

Holy canoli. Just a few short days after making my publishing debut in Spanish (thanks to a SFA blog post picked up by CNN and lifted by one of their Mexican affiliates), now I get the thrill of seeing my own prose translated into, of all things, Vietnamese.

Unfortunately, I don't speak Vietnamese. Fortunately, Google Translate (which is built into the Chrome browser) makes it easy.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much I can trust the automated translation. The headline of the piece translates as "Bread Vietnamese 'gulp' American city like?", which I've got to think is missing a little of the nuance from the original version.

But, the cool thing is that, in the eyes of  Zing.com Vietnam, at least, it's apparently newsworthy that the press in the "second largest city of the state of South Carolina" has picked up on Vietnam's classic street food. Here's how Google translates the one original paragraph written by some Vietnamese scribe before he or she blatantly pirated my text:

In The Charleston City Paper Charleston - the second largest city of the state of South Carolina, U.S., author Robert Moss has expressed his impression filled with dizzying speed of bread Vietnam food market this place.

Again, I expect something might have gotten lost in translation there, and as my editor and her repeated patient but firm deadline reminder emails will attest, "dizzying speed" is not something often used to describe my writing process.

But, how bizarre is it to think that there are people over in Vietnam reading my commentary on the sandwiches their own country invented? It is a small, strange, and almost unbelievable world sometimes.

Banh Mi: New Amercian Icon or Flavor-of-the-Month?

This week for the City Paper I undertook a head-to-head bánh mì battle, surveying the various options for the Vietnamese sandwich here in town and, at the insistence of my editor, selecting one as "best in town".

Unlike Southern cities such as Houston and Atlanta, which have large Vietnamese immigrant communities, bánh mì is brand new to Charleston, showing up for the first time last year. (Though, after the piece ran, I did hear via Twitter that there used to be an Asian grocery out at Rivers and Remount that sold them back in the early 2000s.) Included in the story is a look at the roundabout way the sandwich traveled from the streets of Saigon to upscale digs on Charleston's King Street, plus some musing on banh mi as an example of the American culinary melting pot at work:

A food starts off as an exotic dish found only in immigrant communities. Then, a few intrepid outsiders stumble upon it. Finally, if all the stars are aligned, it goes mainstream in a big way and, as the years pass, becomes so thoroughly a part of American eating that it's no longer thought of as "ethnic."

Of course, the "stars are aligned" part is the key. The hot dog may have made the journey from exotic "frankfurter sausage" to American icon, but how many other German delicacies didn't?  That gap from ethnic to mainstream is pretty darn wide.

I suppose it’s time for the hipsters to start moaning about shark-jumping and inauthenticity and move on to the next new thing.

In fact, we’re hearing it already. The local versions have raised grumblings over their prices. "Hate they charge $10 for this sandwich!," one reader Tweeted. "It's a $2 sandwich in CA!" And then there are the creative liberties. Short ribs and kimchi on a bánh mì? You’d never find it that way on the streets of Saigon!

Yes, but in some ways that’s just the point. Bánh mì began as a fusion of different food cultures, and it’s only natural that adaptation continues as it moves to new locales. The core palette of bánh mì flavors — the cool, minty cilantro merged with carrot crunch and jalapeño heat — provides a firm platform that can support any number of riffs and variations. Roasted eggplant? Eggs and Canadian bacon? Pulled pork and pickled okra? Heck, why not.

Hot dog partisans argue fiercely over the merits of New York’s mustard-and-kraut version versus the dragged-through-the-garden excess of the Chicago-style dog. No one worries about how they used to serve them in Frankfurt. Perhaps in a few decades, sandwich fans will get just as passionate about the endless variety of traditional American bánh mì. It might just happen.

Death of the Entree: Part 2

Four years ago, I declared the death of the entree. Now Pete Wells of The New York Times is trying to bring it back from the dead. "Very few small plates really lend themselves to sharing," he writes in his blog this week. "Either they look like a car crash by the time you’ve divided them in four, or your portion ends up being so small you hardly get to know it before it’s gone." No, what Wells really wants is a good old fashioned large plate entree: "When I really like a dish, and I’m not obsessing about my calorie intake, I tend to want to eat more of it. "

Besha Rodell of the L.A. Weekly took issue with Wells and came to the defense of tapas-style plates:

The tapas trend has done for American dining what no other trend has done, at least not as pervasively, and that is to make eating out more communal and less formal. . . . like Japan and sushi, Spain's way of eating has infiltrated to the point where we claim it as our own. And much like sushi, there will be a period of derision and then it will be such an integral part of our dining culture than people will cease to comment on it at all.

Now, John Kessler of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has jumped on the bandwagon, too. He has always liked the smaller sizes as a restaurant reviewer because they allow him to sample more things on a menu. But now, he notes:

Everyone else is starting to eat this way as well. Stick a fork in your main course, and then pass it along. The entree is just about dead. . . .  Now, I’m seeing so many menus that offer a couple dozen starters to consider and then maybe a handful of entrees. I look around and I see forks flying at many of the tables around me.

And here I was thinking I had settled this whole issue four years ago. Back then, I made the case that, after all the variety of a splendid appetizer line-up, an entree is often just a let down. And, unlike Mr. Wells, I'm not so sure having a huge portion of something is such a great thing:

There's an old show business adage that you want to leave the audience not quite satisfied, so they walk out wishing there was just a little bit more. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be the goal for restaurant dining. "I was still hungry when I left," is not an endorsement--it's the kiss of death. 

Maybe it's time to change that. Why shouldn't we leave restaurants wanting just a little bit more rather than feeling so bloated and full that our middles hurt and all we want to do is lay down in a cool, dark room?

My experience over the past four years has done little to change this conviction. In fact, I've noticed again and again entrees that are having to really stretch to be a big, whopping meal: the groaning mounds of mashed potatoes, piles of veggies that taste just fine on bites one and two but get tired and dull after a dozen forkfuls. And those proteins: massive double-cut pork chops, two filets of fish when one would do, half a large chicken. Who eats that much at a single sitting?

I've come not to praise the entree but to bury it. And this time it better stay dead.

Dining in the Post-Husk Era: A Few Extras

For the City Paper's Summer Dish issue, I contributed the essay, in which I assess Charleston dining in the post-Husk era and contemplate where we might go next. As is usually the case with such pieces, I had far more material than would fit, and a lot of it ended up on the cutting room floor.

Most of it was expendable, but I did regret that there wasn't room for me to talk about some of the more encouraging things going on around town in terms of furthering a distinctive local culinary style. I didn't want the piece to have too negative a note, for as a general matter I'm very bullish on what's going on in Charleston dining these days.

Here's what I originally wrote about some of the positive trends in town:

At the Charleston Grill, Executive Chef Michelle Weaver recently added a fine-dining version of Frogmore Stew to the “Southern” panel of her four-sectioned menu (though I would advocate they rename it “Lowcountry”). There’s also a squab and butterbean appetizer, which hints at another promising trend. The squab is the product of Sumter’s Palmetto Pigeon Plant, for which Frank Lee of Slightly North of Broad has long been an advocate. Now Weaver and other chefs, like Mike Lata at FIG, are adding it to their repertoire.

In his Vogue piece [on Charleston dining and Husk in particular], Jeffrey Steingarten singled out the Peninsula Grill’s coconut cake for praise, noting that it is “said to be a Charleston specialty.” I’m not aware of any other Charleston restaurant serving a similar coconut cake, but perhaps they should--and recreate the long-lost Lady Baltimore cake while they’re at it. 

Husk itself is pushing in the right direction on the cocktail front. Yes, its bar established itself early on as a temple of bourbon--that foreign Appalachian import--fetishizing Pappy Van Winkle and stocking 50 other premium brands from Kentucky and Tennessee. But, with an eye to local history, they’ve added a selection of punches, too, including Charleston Light Dragoon Punch, the signature tipple of Charleston’s elite 19th century militia unit. Following a recipe obtained from the Charleston Preservation Society, Husk’s version packs a potent dose of three liquors--brandy, peach brandy, and Jamaican rum--under the cover of black tea, lemon juice, and sugar, and it’s splendid. There’s an offering of Madeira wines, too, right there on the main cocktail menu--a fitting revival of what was once the premier wine of the Lowcountry elite.

 A Light Dragoon Punch at cocktail hour, then Frogmore Stew for dinner followed by coconut cake, all accompanied by a fine old Madeira. Now there's a meal you'll only find in Charleston, SC.

South Carolina's Earliest Barbecue?

During my research for Barbecue: The History of an American Institution, I pored over countless journals and newspapers and other sources, but I was never able to find a single mention of a barbecue being held in Charleston in the colonial era. And that really surprised me, especially since I turned up a good account of a "barbacue house" and the carousing that went on there just down the coast in Beaufort. It's hard to prove a negative, but eventually I had to conclude that, "Though it was firmly entrenched in the daily life of Virginia planters, barbecue does not seem to have played a significant part in the Lowcountry plantation culture of Charleston, South Carolina."

Now, ironically, while engaged in a completely different line of research (seeking out recipes for rum toddy in the colonial South), I have stumbled across a barbecue reference in Charleston--and very early on, too. It's in an imitation of Horace that was published in London's Gentleman Magazine in 1753, and it was written by one "C.W." residing in Charles Town, South Carolina.

The writer is reveling in the spring, the time at the end of the Charleston season when the planters were wrapping up their business in town and preparing to head back to their rice plantations to begin a new growing year. But first, the poet implored, they should should enjoy themselves a little:

Let's each hold a gen'rous barbicu feast,
And with toddy and punch drink rich wine of the best.

So, perhaps barbecue did have a role in colonial Charleston's social life after all.

The full poem is below:

Where to Find the Oldest Old-School Barbecue?

Looking to experience barbecue as close to its 19th century roots as possible? In a Houston Press piece, Robb Walsh has the perfect insight on where to look.

For the past few years, I have been crisscrossing the Old South documenting Southern barbecue culture. When I set out, I expected to trace American barbecue back to its roots in rural Southern restaurants. But in my research, I found the ancient artisanal culinary culture I was searching for has been much better preserved in community barbecues.

Walsh visits a fundraiser for a German singing society and a community barbecue hosted by the Sons of Hermann Lodge. My favorite part is where the old timer scoffs at the new fangled metal "baskets" used to hold the cooking meat, preferring instead the old-school seven foot metal rods. Classic stuff.

Scenes from Scott's Variety Store

This weekend, CBS producer in tow, I made a trek up Highway 41 to Hemingway to visit Scott's Variety Store, where Rodney Scott was gracious enough to give us a tour of his pits. Watch for the segment--a short piece on barbecue history--on CBS Sunday morning this upcoming weekend, July 15th.

Here are a few pics from the visit.

The Pit House

Order at the Counter

Mop Sauce

Mr. Rodney Scott tending the pigs

The pits

Burn barrel

The Pimento Cheese Trap

A Serious Burger with Pimento Cheese
(under that big blanket of lettuce somewhere)

My article this week for the Charleston City Paper delves into the perilous world of the gourmet burger and calls for a reformation.

One of the problems I identify with "the Serious Burger" (as I've dubbed the gourmet variety) is with the cheese. I didn't have space to ponder the subject of cheese too much in the article, but it's a thing that I've come across again and again and deserves addressing.

If you slap on a thin slice of American cheese on top of a burger, it gets soft right away and melts around the patty to form a smooth, soft coating. With fancier cheeses--like crumbles of bleu cheese or feta--you don't get that effect. The hunks and shards just don't melt properly, and leaving you with a burger with the textures all wrong.

It's a problem that is particularly pronounced with pimento cheese, creating what I like to call "The Pimento Cheese Trap."

 Virtually every Serious Burger joint in Charleston--and all over the South, for that matter--has stumbled into this trap.  You can see why they do it: what better way to gussy up a burger than to top it with a generous scoop of good old “Southern caviar”? You not only get some fancy cheese on the burger but also can tap right into the current hot trend for all things Southern. Instant class and hipness, all in the same scoop.

The problem is not with the pimento cheese itself but with the delivery. When it’s plunked onto the burger in a big cold scoop, the mere warmth of the patty isn’t enough to melt it, and, since most Serious Burger joints don't toast or griddle their buns, you’re left with a burger with big clumpy chunks of cool cheese on top. And it's just not all that pleasurable to eat.

Now, this doesn’t mean that one can’t make a good pimento cheese burger. It’s just that very few restaurants manage to pull it off.

The Rockaway Burger from Columbia’s Rockaway Athletic Club will always be the gold standard for me. Old Columbia residents maintain that the Rockaway Burger is but a pale shadow of the original pimento burger from the long-departed Dairy Bar, and I can't contest that, but the Rockaway Burger has the advantage of still being available on the market.

The burger comes to the table sliced in two, a toothpick speared in each half. The bun is warm and soft, the patty generous but not too thick, and—most important—the pimento cheese is melted completely so that it coats the burger and merges into the soft bun and oozes out in rich, golden drips as you bite into the thing.

Here's a pic from the Columbia Free Times of the Rockaway Burger in all its glory.

So here's a simple plea, burgermeisters: load up that bun with pimento cheese if you wish. But, pretty please, put that thing in a sandwich press or drop it straight on the griddle and melt that cheese good. Anything else is a sacrilege.