It started with a party

We were planning a 1920s evening and wanted to serve more than the drinks everyone already knows. What were people actually drinking?

The answer sent us into old bar manuals and household books, and the questions didn’t stop there. What did Roman wine taste like? Was medieval beer any good? What did people drink when they didn’t drink alcohol at all? Forgotten Drink is where we collect what we find.

What you’ll find here

Stories answer one question about a drink and then tell its history, letting the period sources speak. Recipes name their sources and quote them as printed where the wording survives and may be reprinted, followed by a version you can make today, with quantities you can scale for one glass or a party. Drinks without alcohol get the same research and the same billing as the rest, because every era had them and many were made that way on purpose.

How we work

Everything starts from a library of historical books: bar manuals, household cookbooks and drinks histories from the 1500s to the mid-1900s. Quotes and quantities are checked against the page scans, documented fact is kept apart from legend, and every story ends with its sources, so you can see where each claim comes from and check it for yourself.

Each piece keeps a research record: the books consulted, with printed and scan page numbers, every quote as printed, and how each period measure was converted. A second reader who did not write the piece checks it against those scans before it is published. Books still under copyright are described and adapted, never reprinted. When we find an error, we fix the page.

Recipes follow the same rules. Each one names the book and page it comes from and says which quantities and substitutions are our own choice. Where a page describes how a drink tastes, it goes by what the period writers said and what the ingredients do. The full method is on how we research a drink.

Old prices stay as printed, with a rough present-day equivalent beside them. Each currency is converted by its own country’s official measure: the Bank of England’s inflation figures for British money, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index for American money, and the national statistics office or central bank elsewhere.

Family

Forgotten Drink is a sister site of TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), which adapts vintage recipes for today’s kitchen. Spotted a mistake or know a source we should read? Write to us; corrections are always welcome.