From pre-Civil War Virginia to 'Mad Men,' women guided the modern cocktail craze

When you think about cocktails in history, who do you imagine making and serving them, and where? It's inevitably a man in a bar, right? This, despite the fact that the majority of our cocktail consumption has taken place at home. Dr. Nicola Nice wants to introduce us to the hostesses who shaped cocktail history. Her book, The Cocktail Parlor: How Women Brought the Cocktail Home, takes a look at how women shaped cocktail culture. 

Evan Kleiman: You tell history in such an accessible way through this history of drink — women's history, I should say. "Parlor" seems like such a long ago word. Could you remind us what it is?

Nicola Nice: Yes, I think you're right. It's probably not a word that we use in our everyday speech anymore. But what I wanted with the title was to reflect this idea that when we're drinking cocktails, specifically at home, or any beverage that we would describe as convivial in some way, we don't necessarily have bar-like setups in our home where we specifically go to have drinks. Rather, we have spots in the home that are nice places to sit down and have a cocktail. What I wanted to do with that title is intentionally not call it "The Home Bar" but instead, try to reflect this idea that there are special places in our home, where we enjoy having drinks, and so partly, the book looks at the evolution of those spaces.

In the context of history, when our houses were set up quite differently and we used the different rooms in different ways, what struck me was the intimacy of the cocktail parlor and how women made it very much their space.

Yes, that's right. The original parlor was a front reception room in the house where families would formally receive their guests. It was a room where the family put their best foot forward, if you like. They put their best furniture in there. They put their best works of art. The decoration of the parlor was very much a reflection of the hostess, of the woman of the house, and how she wanted people to feel when they stepped into the home. 

So even though we don't necessarily have those kind of formal reception rooms anymore, the parlor has long since become the living room, which comes from the drawing room, a space that we withdraw to, or a space that we do our living in, we still use it as a space, I think, to reflect the character and personality of the people who live in the house.

Let's start with the beginning of the book. Tell me about the domestic hostess. What is her time period? Who was she? How did serving alcohol play into her responsibilities?

The domestic hostess is what we would call the early to mid-19th century, pre-Civil War hostess, who had responsibility for managing her household. At that time, while men were also still doing a lot of the jobs in the home, during this period of great industrialization and leading into the post-Civil War era, where we start to see a lot more separation between what men and women do, that reflects a movement from the domestic hostess into the lady hostesses era, where her responsibility was much more about the statement that she is able to make in society, about her wealth and social standing and how she entertains. Whereas I would say the domestic hostess is really, at that stage, more focused on the wellness of her family. When this comes to alcohol, specifically, we see uses of alcohol, not just in making cocktail-like beverages but in preserving seasonal ingredients and uses in baking and perfume and, of course, medicines.

Tell me about Mary Randolph and The Virginia House-wife. 

Yes, so Mary Randolph was living in the early 1800s, around the 1820s, in Virginia, and she was a woman who has since posthumously become very famous as writing the first cookbook that is truly what we would describe as an American cookery book. She wasn't the very first to publish American recipes but she was really the first to become a big name in the area of cooking. 

She had a boarding house that she ran that was very well known. She was also, at one time, believed to be one of the first people to have an early version of a refrigerator in her home. So she was a pioneer in a lot of ways, both in terms of cooking, but also in terms of running hospitality businesses and so on.

Let's jump now to the Tea Party hostess and the turn of the 20th century, the new woman for whom suffrage was an issue. Who were these women?

I have to say that this was actually one of my favorite eras to research in the book, because there was just so much social change happening around the turn of the last century. What we have around the early 1900s is the emergence of a much more empowered young woman. Women, for the first time, were entering the workforce in large numbers and living somewhat of a single life, before settling down into marriage. This gave them access, not only to a world that was going on outside the home, and therefore an opinion on what happens outside the home, but also the beginnings of disposable income. 

This resulted in the emergence of this new Tea Party hostess. One of the themes that I wanted to explore in the book was the emergence of the cocktail party, because it is a social ritual that is so embedded into American culture. I think it's something that we associate with images of the 1920s and Prohibition. Certainly by the 1950s, it just became the American way of entertaining. 

It started with these women at the turn of the century who were looking for, let's say, more relaxed ways to entertain, not necessarily these 16-course dinner parties that Gilded Age women were holding at huge expense and huge social exclusion. They started to co-opt this afternoon tea party as an event that would be more relaxed, more informal, and importantly, involved both men and women. 

The reason why the men were willing to attend what we might otherwise think of as a very refined female social tradition and tea party was because these tea parties were now serving alcohol. This became a very acceptable environment for men and women, especially single men and women, to mix and mingle without the need for a chaperone. All their airs and graces and so on that had gone with everything that came before, and indeed, even during all through Prohibition, being invited to a tea party actually became code for being invited to a cocktail party.

The women you highlight in this era were Marion Harland and Christine Herricks. Who were they? 

Marion Harland and Christine Herrick were a mother-daughter duo. Marion Harland was actually a very famous writer in the late 19th century who wrote a lot of household management and domestic guides. She also wrote travel guides and children's books. Christine Herrick, her daughter, followed in her mother's footsteps in becoming a writer. 

The reason I call them out is because they got together in 1904 to publish what I would describe as the first real cocktail guide written by women. So rather than these just being punches and beverages that were common in previous cooking books, this was like a bartender's guide.

You also talk about the rise of women caterers during this time. You say that at the same time as hostesses were professionalizing, they began schooling men on the subject of drinks as well. How so?

As I mentioned earlier, we now have women entering the workforce in much larger numbers. This is not just women going into domestic roles or even to manufacturing roles but actually middle class women now going into clerical and other roles. Importantly, one of the industries where women were first able to dominate, if you like, was in the area of domestic science, and in particular in catering. 

So we have a lot of women who are professionalizing their domestic skills and turning these towards catering businesses. Importantly, what they're doing is also writing about this. One of the early cocktail books written by a woman was by Amy Lyman Phillips in 1906, which was actually a book for men about how to live a single life. Bear in mind at this time, this would not have been appropriate for such a guide to be written for women, but the guide to living singly for men, including how to mix drinks, was actually written by a woman.

Can you describe your cocktail parlor?

Ooh, yes, I can. My husband would tell you that I have multiple cocktail parlors. I certainly do have a lot of spots where I like to enjoy a drink. One of my favorite spots is in an old armchair in a bay window in the front room of my parlor, if you like. The reason I like that spot is I can look internally at my home, but I can also look wistfully out of the window while enjoying a cocktail.

What would that cocktail be at this time of year?

This time of year, I do love a simple Manhattan. As soon as it starts to get a little chilly outside, that's the drink that I begin craving.

The Cocktail Parlor delves into the role women played in building the modern cocktail movement. Photo courtesy of W. W. Norton.