I’m at an interesting phase with the book. First pass edits and the like. It’s a phase I really enjoy and one where changes and improvements still happen. Today, I was working through some notes from the brilliant Rob, on a section about glassware in North By Northwest, in which he quite unexpectedly flagged ...
“3. 3. • Having referred to the 20th Century Limited train, is it worth mentioning the cocktail named after the train (first recorded in the 1937 Café Royal book)?”
WT actual F?
I had absolutely missed this one.
There it is, in Tarling’s original Cafe Royal Cocktail Book, named after “The most famous train in the world” and credited to Charles A Tuck
Tuck was a London bartender and Chairman of the UK Bartenders Guild who, from 1950 was head bartender at the Piccadilly Hotel. In 1967 he published Cocktails and Mixed Drinks which includes the Twentieth Century. Rather refreshingly, he makes no effort to claim it.
TWENTIETH CENTURY
2/5 Dry Gin
1/5 Creme de Cacao
1/5 Lillet
1/5 Lemon Juice
Shake
As we’re all aware, any pre-80s recipe mentioning Lillet puts us into a world of pain because it would have been a reference to Kina Lillet, a quinine-heavy version of the aperitif that was discontinued in 1986, to the eternal disgust of Vesper botherers.
So we have to trade in Cocchi ‘Americano’ which is the accepted modern equivalent.
It really is a cracking cocktail. The idea of combining the chocolate flavour of the creme de cacao with that equal quantity of fresh lemon juice is frankly, weirder than Martin Landau’s subsequent performance as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. But, like Landau, it actually works. Neither flavour predominates.
The 20th Century Limited ran from Grand Central to Lasalle Street station in Chicago from 1902 to 1967. The trip took 20hrs but there were ‘observations cars’, a well equipped bar, a hairdresser and ‘secretarial services’ provided. All of which makes me even less happy about my shitty commute on the Cambridge Vomit Comet. There were also, crucially for the plots of both North By Northwest and The Band Wagon, a luxurious dining car, bunks and private sleeping rooms.
Rather pleasingly, the railway company used to give flowers and cologne to travellers as they boarded and ran scarlet carpets along the platform at stations, apparently the origin of the term ‘Red-carpet treatment’
So here’s my rather lovely 20th Century, in the Libbey #3601 - authentic for the dining car scenes - and, with a bit of luck, I’ll be able to sweep Eva Marie Saint up into my bunk in the final scene of the evening.
My grandmother took the Twentieth Century Limited twice a year on the way to and from college! Local train from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central, then the Twentieth Century Limited to Chicago, then the City of San Francisco all the way across the West to Oakland. The glamour!