Mr. Big Food often includes the verbiage that comes along with the recipes in his crappy old cookbooks. This Hurricane recipe, from Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices by George Leonard Herter and Berthe E. Herter (1960/1970), has a lot over verbiage.

The recipe is in there… somewhere, along will Bull Cook’s recommendation. A hoot of a cookbook.

From Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices by George Leonard Herter and Berthe E. Herter (1960/1970)

HURRICANE

“Pat O’Brien from Alabama and Charles Cantrell from the Carolinas own Pat O’Brien’s bar in New Orleans. Pat O’Brien’s consists of a room with a large standard drinking bar for regular drinking and one room with two pianos with two girls playing the pianos and tables and chairs for group singing and drinking. There is a patio in the rear for quiet drinking.

            The group singing and drinking room is the only drinking room in the world where one minute everyone may be singing some ribald song, so ribald that it would not even be tolerated in the whorehouses of Hong Kong, and the next minute Silent Night.

            The best of the paid world’s singers have sung in the group singing room for free. There is never any paid entertainment. Some of the really fine singers that you hear in this group singing room are not paid singers. They make their living in various other lines and sing only for the pleasure of it. One night of listening to the television scream singers and contortionists proves to anyone with brains enough to run a dial telephone that the best singers nowadays are certainly not the paid ones.

Charles Cantrell invented the Hurricane drink and it is popular at Pat O’Brien’s. It is served in a large hurricane glass, a good twelve inches tall.

The drink is made as follows.

4 ounces of light rum.

2 ounces of lemon juice.

2 ounces of Red Passion Cocktail mix.

Fill up the rest of the glass with crushed ice and that is it.

The Red Passion Cocktail mix is a non-alcoholic mix consisting of the following: sugar, dextrose, water, fruit juices, pulp, true and artificial flavors, phosphoric acid and tartaric acid, vegetable gums, artificial color, one-tenth of one percent of Benzoate of Soda. It has nothing to do with Passion fruit or for that matter very little of any fruit at all.

            Hawaiian Punch is available at grocery stores and contains real fruit juices and used instead of Red Passion Cocktail mix, in my opinion, makes a far, far better Hurricane but, of course, costs a little more.

            Some of the alcoholics who visit Pat O’Brien’s can down seven to eight hurricanes in one evening, if they are in the middle of their alcoholic career. If they are at the tail end of alcoholism, two will put them in an alcoholic foggy stupor.

            It is quite a sight to see some sophisticated gal who does not know that a hurricane contains four ounces of rum come into the bar hanging pretentiously on her boy friend’s arm and smartly toss down a hurricane like a cocktail. The next minute she has a hard time even seeing her boy friend’s arm say nothing about being able to hold onto it and looks about as sophisticated as an Australian bush woman.

            The hurricane drink costs $2.35 including the glass in the regular drinking bar and $2.50 including the glass in the group singing and drinking bar.”