To the Gibson and Beyond

Few Americans have combined such lively experience in the field of cookery and such ability to describe it as M. F. K. FISHER. She is now living in California.

by M. F. K. FISHER

THE first Martini I ever drank was strictly medicinal, for threatened seasickness, and in spite of a loyal enjoyment of them which may be increasing in direct ratio to my dwindling selectivity of palate, I must admit that I still find them a sure prop to my flagging spirits, my tired or queasy body, even my overtimid social self. I think I know how many to drink, and when, and where, as well as why; and if I have acted properly and heeded all my physical and mental reactions to them, I have been the winner in many an otherwise lost bout with everything from boredom to plain funk. A well-made dry Martini or Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature.

The tipple, however, can be dangerous. When about to drink one, I make sure of several things, but mainly how soon I can expect to sit down to a bite to eat. If things look as if they would drift on; if my host has a glint of pre-dinner wanderings and droppings-in in his eye; if my hostess seems disarmingly vague about how to get a meal on the lable; if all this obtrudes no matter how quietly into my general enthusiasm, I say No to no matter how masterly a mixture of gin, vermouth, and lemon-zest.

If, on the other hand. I see plainly that I can relax, confident of tangible nourishment within the hour, I permit myself the real pleasure of a definite alcoholic wallop.

There are two classes of nonprofessional Martinimakers: those who are rudely convinced nobody in the world can make one quite so well as they, and those who shy away from the bar and say with melodramatic modesty that they can ruin anything. The second, when pressed, usually make the bet ter drink.

My own rules for Martinis fall into three somewhat loose groups: the safe, the perfect, and the intimate (and therefore pluperfect).

The first is the mild kind I give to people I don’t know well, which means, bluntly, that they are not close enough to me to betray how many or what kind of drinks they have had before they knock on my door, and that I want to serve wine with the dinner I have carefully prepared for them and do not care to have them turn mussy and maudlin and monotonous. It is made of two parts of gin to one of dry vermouth, and is stirred with ice, poured into chilled stemmed glasses holding not more than two ounces, and served with a green olive stuffed preferably with a pearl onion but passably with a bit of pimiento or almond meat, and the oil from a twisted lemon peel on top. It is mild, and generally safe enough, and can be very good.

The second type is the one I ask for on my occasional sprees in the region’s best restaurant, wherever I am. If I do not know the barman, I try a single Gibson. If it is good, I know that I can ask for a double one with equanimity, and from then on not bother with the first puny sample known as a bar drink. (I was raised to accept Gargantuan glasses as but my just due, by my extra-tall extralusty father, and am incapable of feeling that anything but a double-sized drink is potable, in public places.)

Given the fact that a barman understands what I want, I like, then, on my rare and deeply savored debauches, to precede the luncheon or dinner with one “double Gibson,” to be served in a chilled champagne glass, with the lemon peel twisted once lightly over it. Mv favorite Bacchus gives me a little dish of salty pearl onions impaled on tiny sticks, lying in a bed of snow. I never louch them, but we respect each other for this sop to custom, a compromise on his part with putting onions into the drink itself, and on mine with wishing that they not appear at all.

Perhaps the best bar Gibsons I ever drank were made by a man in Colorado Springs. They were about four parts of gin to one of vermouth, and at the end of stirring them he put a liny spoonful of the pickledonion liquor into each portion. I have tried this, but suspect that the so-called cocktail onions we have produced, since war made life “so dreadfully difficult” for us drinkers, do not have the correct Dutch kick to them. Certainly ihe trick has not worked any too well for me, which is one reason why mv second category of Martinis is arbitrarily professional and why I myself no longer try to duplicate what Bacchus can so deftly and beautifully flick before me.

The third kind, which I have dubbed intimate, is something which should never be served in public, nor to any but the one or two best-known people in the world. It should never be drunk when weariness or the moon’s tides or the press of worldly business is too evident - nor when red wine is to follow. But — but given an easy airy evening, a pleasurable quitting of the day’s chores, and the prospect of uninterrupted and peaceful communion with One, it can be a fine thing indeed.

My recipe sounds like a parody of Robert Benchley’s apocryphal dictum, which electrified early Martini-bibbers: three parts of gin and enough vermouth to take away that ghastly watery look. Mine says four parls of dry gin and one eyedropper of vermouth! It must be served very cold indeed, in generous wine goblets, and it is, in truth, a kind of recidivist version of what is still much better than it can ever be, for such things: vodka, aquavit, tequila . . .

It seems improbable that my hint of herby wine, the tonic quality of a drop of vermouth, could possibly turn straight dry gin into a quick-working aperitif, but it does: chilled gin has nothing in common with this ridiculously delicious cocktail, and unless it be colored with a drop of bitters, or poured from a cold stone flask of real Geneva, is a poor way to precede a meal. Given the silly fillip of a scant driblet of vermouth, icy-cold gin can make a private and soul-satisfving drink indeed — and one not to be indulged in lightly, too long, or oftener than the stars dictate.