The Comet Cocktail (1910)
This very simple cocktail recipe was created, rather surprisingly, to mark the end of the world.
Take a snifter of French vermouth, a jagger of applejack (a type of apple-flavoured alcoholic drink which was traditionally freeze distilled) and some cracked ice. Mix together in a glass and serve. This mixture is guaranteed to lull your fears and allow you to watch the sky with the bravery of a single soldier against an army.
This very simple cocktail recipe was created, rather surprisingly, to mark the end of the world.
1910 was full of excitement for space lovers. The year had started with The Great January Comet which was so impressive that it was even visible in daylight. But the real eagerness was for the long-awaited return of Halley’s Comet, which was picked up by telescopes in early April.
The comet’s return had long been anticipated; in fact, it had been known to return periodically since the eighteenth century when the English astronomer Edmond Halley had first studied its course and predicted its reappearance. The comet had been observed and recorded by astronomers since at least 240 BC, and clear records had been made by Chinese, Babylonian and medieval European chroniclers but were not recognised as reappearances of the same object at the time. In 1705, Edmond Halley used his friend’s, Sir Isaac Newton’s, laws of gravity and motion and compiled a list of 24 comet observations to show that those of 1531, 1607 and 1682 were all the same object. Halley, therefore, predicted that the same comet reappeared every 75-76 years. He was proved right, although he didn’t live to see it, when the comet reappeared in December 1758.
In 1910, the anticipation turned to concern when astronomers revealed that Earth would pass through the comet’s 25 million-kilometre-long tail. This was a worry because in February of that same year the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin used the technique of spectroscopy, when light is analysed to show the composition of celestial objects, to discover that one of the things the tail was made out of was cyanogen: a deadly poison which is part of the cyanide family. Cyanogen gas is an irritant to the eyes and respiratory system. Inhalation of the gas can lead to headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, loss of consciousness, convulsions, and death, depending on exposure.
And with a 25-million-kilometre-long tail full of it, that was a lot of predicted exposure.
This genuine, albeit unfounded, concern was stoked by newspapers and lurid publications that featured pictures and descriptions of people choking to death. The New York Times reported that the French astronomer Camille Flammarion has said that the cyanogen ‘would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet.’
This growing atmosphere of fear was irresistible ground for charlatans and entrepreneurs who offered, amongst other things, comet insurance, anti-comet pills for just $1 a box, gas masks and even anti-comet umbrellas.
The comet also appeared in advertisements for a diverse range of products such as soap, tea, coffee, yeast, champagne, lightbulbs and chewing tobacco.
And as May 19, the day it was known that the Earth would pass through the comet’s tail, came closer both anticipation and fear grew. People prepared for the end of the world: women in Chicago were said to be frantically stuffing the cracks around their windows and doors with paper, a man in South Africa advertised space for one person in his anti-comet shelter, and, tragically, people ended their lives rather than risk being exposed to the poison.
But not everyone reacted in the same fatalistic way to the threat of the end of the world. Some people decided to hold a party.
At the great New York hotels, the Astor, St Regis, Gotham and the Knickerbocker, the smart set could attend special Comet Parties with menus themed to the comet craze. Men and women dressed in their finest clothes and jewels awaited the world to end (even if it was rather tongue in cheek) while eating clams a la comete and omeletes a la comete and even potatoes shaped like stars.
And many, many more faced the problem with a stiff drink in their hand.
The Comet Cocktail described in contemporary reports as being a ‘soothing concoction’ was very popular, but alternatives such as the Cyanogen Highball which was apparently guaranteed to protect the drinker from the deadly gas were also available. How this would work in practice wasn’t specified, but presumably, from the amount of alcohol in the recipe, the plan was to get too drunk to notice.
At the Claypool Hotel in Indianapolis, a bartender named Charles Swiggett, who went by the moniker ‘infuser of libations,’ created a cocktail of a heavy cinnamon liqueur, both kinds of vermouth, the whites of an egg, and some ‘odds and ends that he wouldn’t divulge.’ It was apparently very popular.
People gathered on the roofs of hotels and houses, many with a Comet Cocktail in their hand, and waited. In the end, the comet appeared, everyone was rather underwhelmed, and they went home. But the Comet Cocktail remains with us.