Mystery in White with Hot Spiced Rum

I've just been reading my original review for Mystery in White, written in October 2014, just before it became a surprise Christmas best seller that year. My hope that it would be successful enough to bring more of Farjeon's work back into print has been more than met.

I really loved this one, not least for the way it almost turned into a ghost story, but also because there's something delicious about the set up; a group of strangers find themselves stranded in a country house with no way out and the deepening suspicion that one of them is a murderer. It's a well used device but it's always going to work when it's handled well (as it is here).

I've never been snowed in anywhere with a murderer, but I have been snowed into houses in the country a couple of times and am familiar with the lurking sense of claustrophobia and worry about supplies (one new year in Shetland we were down to left over sprout soup, it's fair to say we were desperate to get out by then, a well stocked cellar really helped us get through it though.)

There are other times when the weather is a welcome excuse to stay in - the torrential rain that we had earlier this week looked much better from an armchair than it did the pavement, and it was certainly cold enough to give me the push to finally try hot buttered rum. In August.

This is a drink that has a venerable history, and that has always sounded good until I started to think about the butter element - when visions of greasy fat floating in my drink have put me off. Seeing hot rum recipes in Jerry Thomas made me overcome my reservations and give it a go however, and it was much better than I hoped.

He says use a small bar glass, one teaspoon of sugar, one teaspoon of mixed spice, one wineglass of Jamaica rum, one piece of butter as large as half a chestnut. Fill the tumbler with hot water. An alternative, which I'll try the moment I'm cold enough again, is to swap the mixed spice for a grate of nutmeg.

I take the specification for Jamaica rum to mean anything that's not white rum would be fine, and opted for a small measure, and a correspondingly smaller amount of sugar, spice, and butter. All stirred up the butter gave the drink a slightly silky mouthfeel without being greasy and the whole thing was warm, fragrantly spiced, and pleasantly sweet. Exactly what you would want if you'd come in from the snow, or out of the rain, or to sit with late in a garden watching stars (and any other excuse that comes to mind). I particularly like this version for it's simplicity, making it was as little effort as making a cup of tea.

Thirteen Guests with a Champagne Cocktail

I prefer to drink good Champagne as it comes, and definitely prefer not to drink poor quality Champagne, or sparkling wine, at all but the Champagne cocktail is a classic and it's my fathers birthday today (he seems to quite like them, though he's not such a fan of Champagne as I am) so it's a suitably celebratory drink to have in mind.

To make it you place a sugar lump in a champagne flute, add a drop or 2 of Angastoura bitters, cover the sugar cube with Brandy, and then top up with fizz*. Marischino cherry optional. It's definitely worth using a reasonable brandy for this (Courvoisier V.S or Martell V.S  would both be great). The less ingredients a coctail uses, the more you'll taste the individual components, and the more you'll know if you've skimped on them. This is not the place for the cooking brandy.

J. Jefferson Farjeon's 'Thirteen Guests' is set against the backdrop of a house party that been gathered together for a stag hunt. The guests include an actress, a journalist, an artist, a mystery novelist, a cricketer, a politician, a beautiful widow, and an industrialist. They also include the hapless John Foss who has ended up there quite by chance after an accident at the train station makes another guest take pity on him. Not quite part of the party, and stuck to a sofa, he gets to observe all sorts of things.

It's a brilliantly atmospheric book, with just the sort of setting, and guest list, where I feel the Cocktails would call for the discreetly decadent edge the Champagne gives this one.


*If you don't want to use Champagne I would suggest a good quality sparkling wine, either something from Australia or New Zealand (using the permitted Champagne grapes - Chardonnay, Pinot noir, and Pinot Meunier and using Champagne method) or a cremant de Bourgogne. All should be a bit cheaper, or at least no more expensive, than a mediocre Champagne on some sort of special offer, and will be excellent. Prosecco and Cava use different grapes, they would make a perfectly good cocktail, but for this I feel it should be something that is at least all but identical to Champagne.

A Scream in Soho with a White Cargo

A Scream in Soho by John G Brandon is the book, a White Cargo is the cocktail, though both sound like pulp fiction titles, or suitable names for this kind of drink. The recipe comes from 'The Savoy Cocktail Book' and dates back to the 1920's. I first came across it on a tag attached to a Sipsmiths Gin bottle and have made variations of it a few times at work for customer tastings.

It's not a cocktail I like, or would particularly recommend, but it generally gets an enthusiastic reception and it fulfils the criteria of being easy to make and only including ingredients you're likely to have around. If you like Baileys (I don't, too sweet and sticky) ignore my opinion on the White Cargo and try it - you might like it very much indeed.

All it calls for is equal amounts of good quality vanilla ice cream and gin (the gin can be quite ordinary) shaken together until smooth. Cut the ice cream into smallish chunks or you'll be shaking it for what feels like forever. If you do like it, experiment further with rum or vodka and any ice cream you like the sound of (I'm not judging) we had particular success with rum and a coconut lime ice cream. The upside is you don't need ice, the ice cream is providing all the cold you want. Definitely drink it quickly though, and mix fresh if you might want another.

'A Scream in Soho' has an impressive line up of Soho Italian gang members (which is what made me think of the White Cargo - or at least it made me think of Glasgow's ice cream wars and organised crime generally.) cross dressing German spies, duplicitous Austrian countesses, and dwarves all running around in the black out getting up to no good (published 1940). There is nothing politically correct about it, but it's authentic vintage pulp with a certain camp appeal, and fast paced enough to carry the reader along. If you like melodrama and period detail, as well as details of period paranoia, you probably want to read this.

Continental Crimes with a Berlin Blonde

Or is it a Parisian Blonde... Many years ago I had a not great cocktail book, now long gone to a charity shop. One of the recipes in it was for a Berlin Blonde, which was just cream and golden rum with nutmeg (or so I remember). I made it once at least a decade ago, so can't have been hugely impressed or I'd probably have made it again.

Now I have found Berlin Blonde recipes online, they call for rum, Cointreau/triple sec/Curaçao, cream, and a sprinkle of cinnamon, but I couldn't find anything about it's history, or any mention of it in The Savoy Coctail book. What I did find was a Parisian Blond (equal parts Jamaica rum, sweetened cream, and Curaçao).

I made that, and threw on some cinnamon anyway because the rum and cinnamon combo was very reminiscent of half the recipes in 'Classic German Baking'. It was okay, but the alcohol felt unbalanced - to harsh, I hadn't sweetened the cream either, and the cinnamon didn't feel quite tight either. So I had another go (proper research goes into this you know) with just rum (a dark rum this time because the last of the golden went into the first round) slightly sweetened with sugar cream in a higher ratio, and the cinnamon again. It wasn't an improvement; the colour was a better Blonde, but there was to much cream which made it bland. Third time was the charm.

1 measure of dark rum, 1 measure of Cointreau, 2 measures of cream, a dash of gomme syrup (which dissolves properly but I'd forgotten I had earlier despite it being in front of me) shaken over ice, strained into a coctail glass with a grate of nutmeg across the top. Just sweet enough, just strong enough, and pretty well balanced all round. The orange from the Cointreau came across nicely, the sweet spicy flavour of the nutmeg complimented the orange better than the altogether more Christmassy cinnamon did, and looked rather more blonde as well.

I like the idea of Berlin for this, rather more than Paris, but even more I like that at some point this drink has changed its identity (like a pulp fiction femme fatale). Creamy drinks aren't normally my thing but this one is simple enough to have a certain elegance, the creamy (after testing 3 I want to say velvety) texture is appealing as well.

I will write more about 'Continental Crimes' in a few weeks, I'm still working my way through it at the moment (so far it's great), I'm particularly pleased that it has an Arnold Bennett story in it. A cocktail plays a pivotal role in his 'The Grand Babylon Hotel' and it's that story that made me want this cocktail with this book.

Death on the Cherwell with a Blackberry drink

The blackberry drink comes from Ambrose Heath's 'Good Drinks' and because it's a Sunday I thought I'd find something non alcoholic. It's in the cold drinks section so not even a mocktail (though Heath  doesn't use that term. His drinks are simply hard or soft.) however there's nothing to stop you adding alcohol, or using blackberry whisky instead of blackberry juice if you're so inclined.

Mavis Doriel Hay only wrote 3 books (all back in print as part of the Crime Classics series, the other 2 are 'Murder Underground', and 'The Santa Klaus Murder'), I found 'Death on the Cherwell' particularly interesting because of its portrait of 1930's Oxford student life. It was published in the same year as Dorothy L. Sayers 'Gaudy Night' and shares some themes with it. 'Death on the Cherwell' has its own charm though, as a period piece it lacks the troubling allusions to eugenics (or the hero worship of Lord Peter), for the current reader it remains more than a pleasant bit of nostalgia thanks to Hay's affectionate portrait of first year students. (I wrote a little bit more about it Here).

At 18 the would be detectives are caught between child and adulthood, still young enough to congregate on a boathouse roof to form a secret society dedicated to cursing the bursar, but not for much longer. Still young enough to enjoy going out in search of blackberries too I should think, although that's a pleasure that far outlives childhood.

This years blackberries are nicely ripe now so this is the perfect time to try this drink. You will want a quarter of a wineglass full (it would be a small wine glass and that's as specific as I can be), a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and a tablespoonful (or to taste) of fine sugar. Put in a large tumbler With plenty of ice, shake well, and top up with soda water.

There's a good recipe for blackberry whisky Here, which is entirely worth making. It really is better if you can leave it for a couple of years to mature (stick it at the back of a wardrobe and forget about it for a while, it's easier than you think) in which time it will become far more than the sum of its parts.

Death of a Busybody with The Bee's Knees

When the Reverend Ethelred Claplady takes a drink in George Bellairs 'Death of a Busybody' it's a glass of sherry. (It's actually 3 glasses of sherry, which leaves him a little the worse for wear, but it's an understandable lapse to make when a deeply unpleasant busybody of a woman is found beaten to death in your cesspool). Now sherry is a drink in all its many (and delightful) forms that I'm willing to champion at any given opportunity, but it's not a cocktail, and I think that Reverend Claplady's sherry is probably best enjoyed as is (I imagine he favours an old oloroso - all nuts, dried fruit, and a dry finish).

However Reverend Claplady also keeps Bees, more than that he's engaged in writing a book about bees, and he sends Inspector Littlejohn some honey in the honeycomb, and that's all the excuse I need to make a Bee's Knees. This is a prohibition era American cocktail where the honey and lemon would have disguised the rough nature of the gin. I found a recipe for a hot version Here a couple of years ago - it's very good, but had never made cold one before tonight.

After a solid hour of unsuccessful searching for something that might sound like a champagne punch I drank at someone's seventieth birthday about 25 years ago - a memory blurred by both time and the strength of the punch (all I clearly remember about the drink was being warned that the secret ingredient was probably a lot of gin, it could equally have been Brandy. Or both.) I felt I deserved a drink.

I know this is another gin cocktail (though vodka would probably be an acceptable substitute given the strong flavour of the other ingredients) but it's really good, really easy to make, and really pretty, so worth embracing.

The recipe is simple - equal parts gin, lemon juice, and honey. I would suggest a light honey to give the gin a fighting chance of being tasted, but it's really a matter of personal taste and experimentation. Mix the gin and honey together until the honey is dissolved, put it in a cocktail shaker with the lemon juice and some ice, shake well, strain into cocktail glasses, and drink.

The combination of sugar (or something sweet), lemon, and gin, is something of a theme with these old cocktails (the Marmalade was another variation) but it works so well that it's worth thoroughly exploring. Here the honey gives the drink a wonderful golden colour, but more than that you also get all the complexity and richness of its flavours coming through - something sugar doesn't provide (or Marmalade for that matter). It doesn't taste alcoholic until about 5 minutes after you've finished it (I'm currently noticing that in fact it was).

Because of the hot version I'd thought of this as a winters drink, but cold with the honey really doing its thing (I used a Dorset heather honey this time) it tastes of summer hedgerows and gardens - which is nice, and also chimes in with the serpents in Eden theme of 'Death of a Busybody' for me.

Serpents in Eden with a Daisy

Daisies are a class of cocktail I hadn't really encountered before I started digging around in vintage drinks books (although to be fair with the knitting, books, working for a living, the not insubstantial cost of building up a sizeable collection of gin and single malt whisky, writing, shooting, and buying the occasional picture - I don't go out much of an evening, so for all I know they could be everywhere) but they're exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.

The internet tells me that a margarita is a type of daisy which should give you an idea of what to expect, but it's origins go back to the 19th century. I found recipes in Jerry Thomas and also in Harry Craddock's 'Savoy Cocktail Book' from the 1930's (I dithered about buying this for years, it's currently out of print so I've ended up with an e version on my phone. It's a horrible format for a cocktail book, and a lesson learnt about dithering.) I preferred the look of the Savoy versions which don't require curaçao, orgeat, or marischino. Curaçao (not blue) isn't so hard to find, orgeat and marischino are both worth having if you're serious about classic cocktails, but you need a proper specialist, or to order them online.

The gin daisy calls for the juice of half a lemon, 1/4 of a tablespoonful of powdered sugar (or a dash of gomme syrup to taste) 6 dashes of grenadine (or again to taste, because what's a dash?) a measure of gin, and a long tumbler. Half fill the glass with cracked ice, stir well, top up with soda water, and garnish with 4 sprigs of green mint and slices of seasonal fruit. A rum version (made with Santa Cruz rum) wants the orgeat and marischino, the whisky daisy dispenses with the garnishes and the grenadine and is shaken with ice before being strained into a cocktail glass and being topped up with soda water. I will try the whisky version the next time I have a suitable whisky hand. The brandy daisy recipe in Jerry Thomas calls for a dash of rum, Harry Craddock doesn't mention it.

The gin daisy I made was a deceptively potent affair with a sherbety mix of sweet and sour. The grenadine made it a delicate blush pink as well as providing sweetness and I really liked it. Grenadine  can be found in any supermarket in the mixer section, but have a look at cordials as well, it's quite possible you'll find a bottle (teisseire is a good example) 4 times the size for the same price. Gomme syrup is simply a sugar syrup. You can buy it for convenience, but if there's any chance you'll use a lot of it make a bottle ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. It'll be much, much, cheaper.

And as for the book choice? It's hard to express just how enthusiastic I am about the Crime Classics short story anthologies without sounding like a slightly crazy woman - is it enough to say I really love them, and short story collections generally? No, apparently it isn't. I like the surprises a well chose selection throws up, the range of styles. The chance, as with these books, to really explore a particular theme as viewed by a range of authors, and I love the way short stories fit into bus journeys, work breaks, waiting for something to cook, and all the other odd times in a day when you find yourself with quarter of an hour or so to fill. The list could go on.

'Serpents in Eden' covers countryside crimes, and has the most perfect story about sabotage and vegetable marrows it's possible to imagine (by Margery Allingham, it's about 10 pages long, nobody gets murdered) and the book is worth its purchase price for this story alone. Ethel Lina White's 'The Scarecrow', and Leonora Wodehouse's 'Inquest' also stand out in memory, it's a book full of highlights. A daisy sounds suitably innocent and bucolic, whilst having all the neccesary bite once you drink it, to sum up the appeal of this collection to me.

The Incredible Crime with a 'Marmalade'

Reasearching coctails is all well and good, but this one has a kick like a mule which bodes ill for my concentration (and the knitting I was going to finish later). I found the 'Marmalade' in Ambrose Heath's 'Good Drinks' originally published in 1939 (beautifully reprinted by Faber & Faber with a nice Edward Bowden cover). Heath is an engaging writer in the subject of food and drink (Faber & Faber have reprinted 2 titles, so have Persephone, I really hope someone picks up 'Good Breakfasts' and 'Good Sandwiches and Picnic Dishes' both of which sound charming) though his instructions on Cocktails are very much of their time.

All he has to say on the subject of the Marmalade is to take 2 tablespoons of Cooper's Oxford Marmalade, the juice of a large lemon, 4 glasses of gin, and a squeeze of orange peel in each glass. That's it. I'm taking the line that precise measurements are a matter of taste for this one. To make a single measure I used a small teaspoon of Marmalade (my own, of course) the juice of half a small lemon, and a measure of gin. I shook them all with ice and am drinking it, strained, from a martini glass. I've also tried it with soda water added as a long drink with more ice (and all the Marmalade bits) - which works very well indeed.

Three days in gin is emerging as a bit of a feature for this month, that's because I really like gin and I'm primarily looking for drinks that use a minimum of expensive or difficult to source ingredients. This cocktail would work well with either vodka or a white rum as a base - and probably with whisky or Brandy too if anyone cares to make the experiment. The astringency from the lemon juice is nicely balanced by the sugar in the Marmalade, but only just so it tastes like a grown up drink - the soda water makes it summery, but otherwise it tastes a lot like something that would be very welcome by the gore on a winters afternoon after some sort of freezing cold out doors activity.

Marmalade, even if it's Oxford Marmalade, seems perfectly in accord with the Cambridge college and country house setting of 'The Incredible Crime', the gin kick of this cocktail very much in tune with what I'd expect hard swearing Prudence Pinsent to drink after an energetic days hunting. (A Percy special might have been another choice.)

The charm of 'The Incredible Crime' is its atmospheric evocation both of collage and country house life, something the 'Marmalade' certainly adds too.

Death on the Riviera with a Negroni

Whilst Shetland is having the best summer anyone can seem to remember (sunnier than Cornwall in July, and no crowds on the beaches) Leicestershire is putting on an energy sapping display of grey clouds and what feels like near constant rain (the sun has come out occasionally, but mostly when I've been at work, and never for long).

Thank god then for books which conjure the idea of summer and sun when nature doesn't oblige. I've been enjoying Kay Plunkett-Hogge's 'Aperitivo' (it started off looking like something I didn't need, but quickly turned into such an engaging book that I couldn't go home without it), so much so that I'm almost convinced to try, again, to appreciate Campari. Kay has a lot to say about Campari generally, and almost as much to say about Negronis specifically.*

I might struggle to really enjoy Campari's distinctive bitterness, but plenty of other people love it. It's been around since 1860, but really became popular after 1915. If you do like it, it's a great thing to have around because it goes into a few classic cocktails, the Negroni (closely followed by the Spritz) being the best known. At its most basic a Negroni is equal amounts of Campari, Gin (I agree with Kay about going for a classic like Beefeater) and vermouth, though there are plenty of variations regarding the gin, the vermouth, and the precise percentages, for perfectionists to pursue.

John Bude is maybe a bit of an acquired taste too, he was moderately successful as a crime writer in his own life time, but has sold far more as part of the Classic Crime series than he did in his own lifetime. One reason for this might well be that so many of his books are based in real places (Sussex Downs, Lake District, Cornish Coast, and of course the Riviera) the place becomes almost an extra character, and undoubtedly increases the nostalgic appeal of his work.

'Death on the Riviera' was first published in 1952, and is easily my favourite Bude (so far). I think it's the dash of humour that I particularly like, most of it fairly gentle, that and the sense of a smoggy miserable London abandoned in favour of the sunny Riviera. I believe I remember Brandy being drunk more than anything else in this one, but I'm certain that Nesta Hedderwick's bohemian guests would have put away any amount of Campari, quite likely in Negroni form.

*Aperitivo has lots of variations on the gin/bitters/vermouth theme. Vermouth is really useful to have in the kitchen but should be used reasonably quickly (within a couple of weeks) once opened. There are plenty of prompts here to use it up - much better than finding a sadly oxidised bottle some months later.

Classic Crime and Cocktails

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books with a Tom Collins

I've been happily working my way through Martin Edwards 'The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books' for the last month or so (read it for to long at a stretch and the resulting wish list quickly gets out of hand). It's excellent, and mentions many more than 100 books, so there are a lot of avenues to explore. The British Library Crime Classics series has also now passed the 50 titles mark, ('The Story of Classic Crime' serves as a companion to the series) with the promise of plenty more to come, which is good news all round.

Edwards says in his introduction to 'Classic Crime' that "The main aim of detective stories is to entertain, but the best cast a light on human behaviour, and display both literary ambition and accomplishment. And there is another reason why millions of modern readers continue to appreciate classic crime fiction. Even unpretentious detective stories, written for unashamedly commercial reasons, can give us clues to the past and give us insight into a long vanished world, that for all its imperfections, continues to fascinate".

It's a statement that sums up why I read so many of the books that I do, and what I enjoy about them. Any vaguely nostalgic yearnings for a different time are the least of it (and don't really go back any further than long school holidays with rainy afternoons spent fishing through disintegrating  boxes in the attic which often turned up slightly mouldy old book club editions). I am really fascinated by the clues and insight into a not so distant part though.

With all of that in mind I thought it was time for another booze and books series, but this time specifically focusing on the Crime Classics series, and cocktails of a similar vintage. (Cocktails and crime fiction seem to have evolved at roughly the same time, and certainly enjoyed a joint 'golden age' between the wars - and that's the line I'm sticking with).

I've been looking for simple cocktails that call for a minimum of ingredients mostly to answer the 'and how to you drink this/what do you mix it with' questions I get at work, and because I think they're the sort that work best at home. (I'm not a natural when it comes to mixology, and don't have the space or money for an extended collection of liqueurs).

The 'Tom Collins' is an obvious start point - first recorded in the second edition of Jerry Thomas' 'The Bartenders Guide' (1876) there are some great stories about its origin. The first, from America, suggests it got its name from a hoax played in 1874 (it made the papers). People would be told that somebody called Tom Collins was in such and such a bar spreading nasty rumours about them, but when they got there and asked for him they got a drink instead... An alternative British version suggests that it's name got mixed up with that of John Collins, head waiter at Limmers Hotel on Conduit street, London (familiar to Georgette Heyer fans) in the 1870's. He served a gin drink that fits the same description, and would probably have been a close relation to Georgian Gin punches.

The Jerry Thomas version calls for five or six dashes of sugar syrup, the juice of a small lemon, one large wineglass of gin (large wine glasses of the period were rather smaller than now) and two are three lumps of ice. Shake well, and strain into a large bar glass (a Collins glass!) and fill up with plain soda water. Imbibe while it is lively. Whisky or brandy can be used instead of gin. Later versions throw in a marischino cherry.

This is basically gin with (a good quality, and properly lemony) lemonade, but it can be made sweet or sour to taste and makes an excellent alternative to a gin and tonic. For real authenticity use an 'Old Tom' Gin for a British version, or a Dutch genever for the American. I can't help but think it would also be an especially good match with William Stephens Hayward's 'Revelations of a Lady Detective' as well.

I generally read with nothing stronger than a cup of tea or coffee to hand, but all Cocktail suggestions are welcome.