The foreword by Mrs. Perditta Long (who sounds like a Thomas Pynchon character
to me) says the recipes have been put together by a “special investigating
committee ... which penetrated the security barriers guarding treasured kitchen
secrets of club members … at this atomic base,” which suggests to me that the
girls maybe didn’t take Cold War rhetoric quite as seriously as their
government might have liked.
Between 1946 and 1971 Sandia Base was the site
of atomic weapons research, testing, fabrication, and storage. The food recipes are as downhome and
all-American as you might expect; Jello-Applesauce Salad, Georgia Dickinson’s
Lobster Casserole Surprise, Ozark Pudding.
It’s the small collection of cocktail
recipes that goes really nuclear. The Percolator Punch consists of one cup of
citrus fruits and pineapple, half a cup of honey, and a quart of bourbon.
But my favorite is the Champagne
Punch. No Moet et Chandon here. There ingredients are:
Half
a gallon of sauterne,
1
pint sherry,
1
quart Branch (I had to look that up – as far as I can tell it means plain
water, preferably from a stream)
2
large bottles charged water (had to look that up too – it’s soda water)
2
Bottles of 7 Up
Then
oranges, lemons and sugar to taste.
Well, that would certainly be a drink to
get you through the nuclear summer, if not the nuclear winter, and I know the good
folks in Champagne get very upset if you use the term “champagne” to describe a
sparkling wine from anywhere else in the world, so Lord knows how they’d feel
about that usage in Champagne Punch.
We do know that the past is another
country when it comes to food and drink, and especially to cocktails. Everything was so much sweeter back
then. So when I was in Cole’s restaurant
in downtown L.A. a couple of days back, it seemed only natural to order the
“Original Martinez” on the drinks menus, made from genever, Dolin sweet vermouth, orange curacao,
angostura bitters and with a Luxardo cherry. It looked like this:
I found it a little sweet too sweet for
my taste, but I’m sure the girls in Albuquerque, in
1954, would have lapped it up.
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