‘BRADFORD’: Take two dashes orange bitters. Add one-half Italian
vermouth, and one-half Tom gin. Garnish with a twisted lemon
peel.

Drink up, it’s called a “Bradford.”

Rick Frederick tells us this drink recipe is contained in a book
by Albert Stevens Crockett, published in New York in 1931, and
titled “Old Waldorf Bar Days.”

It’s a book about the bar and patrons at the old Waldorf Hotel,
which stood on the site of today’s Empire State Building.

Rick tells us it has a rather interesting subtitle: “With the
Cognomina and Composition of Four Hundred and Ninety-one Appealing
Appetizers and Salutary Potations Long Known, Admired and Served at
the Famous Big Brass Rail” also “A Glossary for the Use of
Antiquarians and Students of American Mores.”

“I guess the book’s appeal for me is clear from all that,” he
writes.

It includes a lot of names, some with stories, and a few
interesting anecdotes. Of note for Bradford is a passage on page
47, in which the author is writing about the “Waldorf crowd,” about
a dozen strong, who were customers in a brokerage office located in
the Waldorf Hotel’s Benkhard & Company.ð

“One of the ‘crowd,’ all of whom were high rollers, was E.E.
Smathers, described as an ‘oil man and race horse owner,’ and rated
as the best poker player in the United States.”

Later, in the drinks section of the book, is the recipe for
‘Bradford’ and this description: “Not called after a celebrated
Pilgrim Father, but after a town in Pennsylvania, whose name was
often heard in the Bar because E.E. Smathers, one of its well known
patrons, came from Bradford, or thereabouts.”

Rick tells us the recipe doesn’t sound too hot – the Italian
vermouth is the sweet one, not the dry one which you’d use normally
with gin in a martini. And there’s a lot of it in the drink.

“The ‘Tom’ gin is a type of English gin (‘Old Tom’), by the
way,” Rick writes. “Quite a few of the gins referred to in the book
are still available, like Gordon’s and Plymouth and Booth’s, but
I’ve never seen the ‘Old Tom’ referred to here – I’m assuming any
of the English (as opposed to that awful Dutch stuff) gins would
work, if you wanted to try a Bradford at home.”

If you try it, let us know …