Regarding Mr. Boston Platinum Edition…
I know that a lot of us were contributors to this, and while I’m not sure exactly what others contributed, I know what I did… When Anthony was originally preparing the normal 2006 red-jacket edition, he reached out to me to find out what I felt could be changed. I basically responded with “where to start!”, and asked for the entire set of recipes, which he promptly sent. I went through every one, and made a variety of modifications, I removed sour mix from everything (except I think the gimlet), removed powdered sugar from everything, redistributed the “Canadian Whisky” cocktails to Bourbon and Rye when appropriate, fixed the basic recipes for several, and added in a bunch of “new” recipes from several of us (Anthony said Mr. Bostons wouldn’t allow him to list attribution).
Also… I told him that what Mr. Boston’s really needed to do, was to step a bit above simply providing a “wad-o-recipes”, and offer a little guidance as to what the “classic” recipes were to provide the neophyte reader with an idea of which drinks they perhaps should start on, as well as some more background information on them. I offered, without being asked, an example set of writeups that I thought would illustrate what I was suggesting.
Skip forward to the publication of the Platinum edition, which I hadn’t even known was coming out, and as I was browsing through the copy, as I was reading the section on Classic Cocktails (which I think is the main difference in the Platinum edition and the normal one?)… and I found myself saying… Hmmm… why does this sound familiar? Then I remembered the writeups I had sent him many months previously. He used them almost verbatim. 