Lively Libations

Please Don’t Shoot the Pianist: Mix Him Up a Tom and Jerry, Instead.

Leadville, Colorado’s mining boom began in the 1870s when silver and lead were discovered. Between 1878 to 1879, the population hovered around six to eight thousand individuals. Reports flled the newspapers across America when western papers compared each new boomtown to the last. A paper in Deer Lodge, Montana, noted Leadville claimed it was larger than Deadwood. In Leadville, a hardworking miner earned three dollars per day, and he often spent it in a saloon or dance hall. Whiskey cost twenty-five cents per drink and was a lot cheaper than milk.

The whiskey in Leadville was not the best, however, and a Kansas paper noted that it, “is 90 degrees above the high-water mark.”

Another shot was taken at Leadville’s whiskey by a St. Joseph, Missouri, newspaper. “Leadville whisky assays ninety-eight percent of pure spring water. That kind of beverage will strike with consternation the average stomach of the St. Joseph prospector.”

Despite the bad press from some newspapers, Leadville’s saloon thrived and many offered a variety of spirited beverages. The Pioneer Billiard Hall served juice apple cocktails, Phil Golding offered imported wines, the Board of Trade offered champagne cocktails, and the Pioneer saloon advertised they served the most “incomparable cocktails” and “mouths water to think of them.”

As Oscar Wilde traveled across the West in 1882, he ended up in Leadville. He penned, “From Salt Lake City one travels over the great plains of Colorado and up the Rocky Mountains, on the top of which is Leadville, the richest city in the world. It has also got the reputation of being the roughest, and every man carries a revolver. I was told that if I went there, they would be sure to shoot me or my traveling manager. I wrote and told them that nothing they could do to my traveling manager would intimidate me. They are miners—men working in metals, so I lectured to them on the Ethics of Art. I read them passages from the autobiography of Benevento Cellini and they seemed much delighted. I was reproved by my hearers for not having brought him with me. I explained that he had been dead for some little time which elicited the enquiry ‘Who shot him?’ They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: PLEASE DO NOT SHOOT THE PIANIST. HE IS DOING HIS BEST. The mortality among pianists in that place is marvelous. Then they asked me to supper, and having accepted, I had to descend a mine in a rickety bucket in which it was impossible to be graceful. Having got into the heart of the mountain I had supper, the first course being whisky, the second whisky and the third whisky. I went to the Theatre to lecture and I was informed that just before I went there two men had been seized for committing a murder, and in that theatre, they had been brought on to the stage at eight o’clock in the evening, and then and there tried and executed before a crowded audience. But I found these miners very charming and not at all rough.”

The Pioneer saloon took advantage of Oscar Wilde’s poems and ran this text in an 1882 ad: “If a man don’t go much on Oscar Wilde’s poems he will go strong on the Pioneer Tom and Jerry.” This is the infamous Tom and Jerry cocktail that served all over the frontier, including Leadville.

Tom and Jerry

1 egg, separated powdered sugar pinch baking soda

1 jigger rum hot milk

½ oz. California brandy nutmeg

Beat the egg yolk in one bowl and the white in another. Once they have been beaten separately, combine them together, then add enough powdered sugar to make a stiff batter. Add the baking soda and rum, stirring gently. Add a little more sugar to stiffen the batter again.

Dissolve one tablespoon of the batter in three tablespoons of hot milk. Place in a hot mug. Add the rum, then fill the mug with hot milk until it reaches one-quarter inch from the top.

Top with brandy and a grating of nutmeg.

Sherry Monahan is an award-winning culinary historian who enjoys researching the genealogy of food and spirits. While there’s still plenty to explore about frontier food, she’s expanding her culinary repertoire to include places and foods from all over America and beyond. She holds memberships in the James Beard Foundation, the Author’s Guild, Single Action Shooting Society, and the Wild West History Association. She is also a professional genealogist, and an honorary Dodge City marshal. One of her latest titles, The Tombstone Cookbook: Recipes and Lore from the Town Too Tough To Die, won the 2023 Will Rogers Medallion Award Gold Medal for Best Western Cookbook.