Once a wintertime staple served in taverns and saloons across America, the Tom & Jerry cocktail/punch was relegated to obscurity until recent years when cocktail resurgence and the drinks connections to Jerry Thomas assured its resurrection - particularly as a drink served over the Christmas period.
One of the reasons for the decline of this cocktails could be the perceived faff involved in its production - especially the 'Tom & Jerry batter' base. However, it's easy to make and uses everyday household and easy to obtain ingredients. Our Tom & Jerry recipe has six easy to follow steps to make enough to serve anything from 6 to 48 people.
HISTORY
A complete list of Tom and Jerry animated shorts, from the Hanna-Barbera era that began in 1940, to the brief Gene Deitch era in 1961, and finally the Chuck Jones era beginning in 1963. Thomas' Adventures of Tom and Jerry: The Movie is an upcoming Thomas & Friends/Tom and Jerry crossover film to be created by 76859Thomas. It will appear on Google Drive in the near future. Tom and his owners are about to move to a new home. While Tom dozes in the back of the car, he notices. Thomas Jasper 'Tom' Cat is a fictional character and one of the two titular main protagonists (the other being Jerry Mouse) in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's series of Tom and Jerry theatrical animated short films. Created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, he is a grey and white anthropomorphic domestic short haired mute Tuxedo cat who first appeared in the 1940 MGM animated short Puss Gets the Boot. Due to his own claims of being this drink's inventor, the Tom & Jerry was for many years credited to Jerry Thomas at the Planter's House Hotel in St Louis. However, the Tom & Jerry cocktail's real origins predate the flamboyant 'Professor'.
Due to his own claims of being this drink's inventor, the Tom & Jerry was for many years credited to Jerry Thomas at the Planter's House Hotel in St Louis. However, the Tom & Jerry cocktail's real origins predate the flamboyant 'Professor'.
Jerry Thomas (bartender) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jeremiah 'Jerry' P. Thomas (October 30, 1830 – December 15, 1885) was an American bartender who owned and operated saloons in New York City. Because of his pioneering work in popularizing cocktails across the United States as well, he is considered 'the father of American mixology'.
Although there are many earlier written references to this drink, the cocktail appeared in Jerry Thomas' first 1862 edition of How To Mix Drinks as follows:
Jerry Thomas became synonymous with the Tom and Jerry cocktail. Indeed, in his own recipe above, he says the drink sometimes takes his own name. And during his career he repeatedly claimed the drink as his own, including an often quoted 1880 interview by a reporter named Alan Dale, an interview repeated almost word for word in Thomas' New York Times obituary, which appears as follows courtesy of David Wondrich's 2015 Imbibe!.
'One day in... 1847 a gentleman asked me to give him an egg beaten up in sugar. I prepared the article, and then... I thought to myself, 'How beautiful the egg and sugar would be with brandy to it!' I ran to the gentleman and, says I, 'If you'll only bear with me for five minutes I'll fix you up a drink that'll do your heartstrings good.' He wasn't at all averse to having the condition of his heartstrings improved, so back I went, mixed the egg and sugar, which I had beaten up into a kind of batter, with some brandy, then I poured in some hot water and stirred vigorously. The drink realised my expectations. It was the one thing I'd been dreaming of for months... I named the drink after myself, kinder familiarly: I had two small white mice in those days, one of them I called Tom and the other Jerry, so I combined the abbreviations in the drink, as Jeremiah P. Thomas would have sounded rather heavy, and that wouldn't have done for a beverage.'
Tom Cat Wiki
Despite this and many other claims, Jerry Thomas most definitely did not create the Tom & Jerry. Again (as is so often the case in matters of cocktail history) we turn to David Wondrich and his excellent Imbibe! where he reprints an article first published 20th March 1827 in the Salem Gazette (Massachusetts). Appearing three years prior to Jerry Thomas' birth, this damming evidence clearly references the Tom and Jerry, both by name and ingredients.
'At the police court in Boston, last week, a lad about 13 years of age was tried for stealing a watch, and acquitted. In the course of the trial, it appeared that the prosecutor [the plaintiff] sold to the lad, under the name of 'Tom and Jerry,' a composition of saleratus [baking soda], eggs, sugar, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and rum. A female witness testified that the boy... appeared to be perfectly deranged, probably in consequence of the 'hell-broth' that he had been drinking.'
The above, and other pre-Jerry Thomas references to the Tom & Jerry uncovered by David Wondrich suggest the drink originated in America's New England area, although its true inventor remains unknown. Fact is, if it were not for Jerry Thomas championing the drink, the Tom & Jerry itself would probably also be unknown.
At it’s core, the Tom & Jerry is comprised of a rich batter, essentially akin to a whipped eggnog combined with cognac and/or rum and hot water.. Think about drinking hot, sugary pancake batter. Some people use whole milk instead of water, but the recipe has stayed relatively unchanged over the years—the backstory has not.
Golden Age bartending guru, Jerry Thomas successfully propagated the myth that the drink was his creation (and named in his own honor). However, the true creator of the libation was British writer Pierce Egan. In 1821, Egan’s book, Life in London, or The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq. and his Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom was tearing up the charts. In fact, the book proved so popular that Egan sold the coveted theatrical rights; a stage adaptation titled Tom and Jerry, or Life in London was the talk of London’s West End the same year. Fun fact: The title was a double-entendre ad Tom and Jerry was an old English phrase for hitting the town hard… The work also popularized the phrase “three sheets to the wind.” Anyway, Egan created one of the earliest known branded drink specials. He created a drink, the Tom and Jerry, named after his book on drinking.
However, Egan’s early cross-marketing was nothing compared to the self promotion of the “Professor,” Jerry Thomas. Despite the preceding evidence to the contrary, Thomas proudly professed to have created the libation, himself, in 1847. No stranger to the press, Thomas offered several interviews about the origins, the most famous being z recounting in Englishman Alan Dale’s 1885 homage to America, Jonathon’s Home. In that telling, Thomas first notes that his youth was spent at sea around California and then recounts that on one incident a man requested of him a drink of egg beaten with sugar. Naturally, Thomas thought the concoction would be better with brandy. Thomas told his guest, “If you’ll only bear with me for five minutes, I’ll fix you a drink that’ll do your heartstrings good.” Within the allotted timeframe, the Tom and Jerry was born—according to the fabricated legend.
Thomas alleged that the success of “his” hot drink was directly responsible for the invention of several of his other classics including the Blue Blazer, Buck and Brick, and Lamb’s-Wool. “After the invention of the ‘Tom and Jerry,’ I got inspired and had large confidence in myself,” he told Dale. “Men came to me when they wanted anything extra good, and I felt my obligations to be sacred, and that I had incurred responsibilities which made it necessary for me to go on doing well.”
Check out the Professor’s original recipe below in his own words. For more on the Tom and Jerry, here’s a full history.
- 5lb.Granulated White Sugar
- 12Egg
- 0.5glassJamaican Rum
- 0.5tsp.Cinnamon(ground)
- 0.5tsp.Cloves(ground)
- 0.5tsp.Allspice(ground)
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Tom And Jerry Thomas And Jerome
- Beat the white of the eggs to a stiff froth, and the yolks of the eggs until they are as thin as water, and then mix together and add the spice and the rum, thicken with sugar until the mixture attains the consistence of a light batter.
- Take a small bar glass and one table-spoonful of the above mixture, add one wine-glass brandy, and fill the glass with boiling water, grate a little nutmeg on top.
- Adepts at the bar, in serving the Tom and Jerry, sometimes adopt a mixture of 1/2 brandy, 1/4 Jamaican rum, 1/4 Santa Cruz rum, instead of brandy plain. This compound is normally mixed and kept in a bottle, and a wine-glassful is used to each tumbler of Tom and Jerry.
- N.B. -- A tea-spoonful of cream of tartar, or about as much carbonate of soda as you can get on a dime, will prevent sugar from settling to the bottom of the mixture.
- This drink is sometimes called the Copenhagen and sometimes called the Jerry Thomas.