How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon-Vivant’s Companion,A Manual for the Manufacture of Coridals, Liquors, Fancy Syrups, etc.: A Reprint of the 1862 Original with a Conversion Chart for Modern Use Paperback – 29 Jan. 2013

The very first paragraph tells the reader that this edition is brought to us by “Literate Elves” at Bedazzled @ something.com, that “something” being printed in undecipherable script.The “Literate Elves” state that “the recipes are interesting and shouldn’t be missed by any mixology historian,” yet they only provide 85 of the original 463 recipes from the from the section by Christian Schultz. That’s right, they omit 378 of the original recipes in this book that “shouldn’t be missed by any mixology historian.”The first section, by Jerry Thomas, is largely intact, except that the “Literate Elves” removed the table of contents that was in the original book. They also did not number the pages, as a modern literate reader would expect. And having no page numbers, there is no means to provide an index, something else that a modern reader might expect.The drinks have been converted to modern measurements so that the reader doesn’t have to deal with nineteenth apothecary’s measurements, such as a drachm, and as such, might be a useful companion to the original book.There is a table for converting some of the measurements to ounces in the ‘note on the recipes’ at the beginning of the book. It also includes two incomplete* tables for converting weight and liquid measurements, which are buried somewhere in the middle of the book - and having no page numbers, table of contents or index, the reader is on his or her own to find it.*Incomplete, such as it tells the reader that a drachm as sixty grains, but not that the modern term for drachm is dram, and it is a weight measurement equal to an eighth of an ounce.Perhaps grains are measures meaningful to elves, but they are of little use modern mixologists or casual readers.And finally, apparently none of the semi-literate elves are mixologists. For example, they never tell the reader that the "rock candy syrup" and the "clear syrup" used in many of the recipes are known as "simple syrup" to modern mixologists .If you are truly a “mixology historian,” spend another ten bucks for a reprint of the original book.