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https://languagehat.com/frogtown-racer/

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Trevor Joyce, the generous and inquisitive Irish poet so frequently seen around here as a source of Hattic items, writes as follows: “I’m sifting through some files of research on family history, and came across this, which drew my attention for its boozy air. The anecdote is obviously the thing, but when I went googling, expecting to find very many instances, I found myself flooded with BMX bikes, but divil the cocktail of this name.” Here’s the thing itself, quoted from the Boston Globe of June 11, 1893:

UNDER THE ROSE

Considerable curiosity has been aroused as to the exact nature of the beverage alluded to in Dr Frank Harris’ editorial of last Sunday, to wit, the “Frogtown racer.” None of the wine clerks seems to be familiar with it. Happening to meet the doctor, I ventured to ask him for the recipe. He said that the beverage was invented, or at least exploited, by that bohemian of medicine and literature, the late Dr Robert Dwyer Joyce, who consumed. according to his own account, two gallons of the “racer” while endeavoring to get Deirdre down from the tower into which he had put her in the course of his construction of the poem of that name.

The recipe indicates that the Frogtown racer is a very light whisky punch made with soda, into which a teaspoonful of maraschino is put and on top of this is carefully laid a “lemon float,” that is, a thin section of the fruit cut at the middle of the lemon. On this is gently poured a little port wine.

The effect is to make a drink of delicate flavor and presenting alternate zones of amber, yellow and purple whose relations, owing to the difference in specific gravity, are maintained during its consumption. This drink was a favorite not only of the doctor, but of the late Edgar Parker and many others of the Papyrus at a time when the club coat was a tradition.

Apropos of this drink, Dr Harris tells a good story of his friend Nat Childs. Both were abroad seeing Europe “while you wait,” and in Paris Nat was much amused at the so-called American bars, where the barkeeps were more English than a unicorn, and where a man was especially employed to sweep out at regular intervals the h’s dropped by the barkeeps and the regular customers. At these bars were sold as American drinks compounds with names entirely unheard of in this country, such as “corpse-reviver,” “beautiful lap,” “pick-me-up,” “eye-opener,” etc.

Now, Nat used to go into one of these places after the other and inquire: “Do you sell American drinks here?”

“Oh yes, sir, hall of them.”

“Then,” said Nat, “make me a Frogtown racer”

“A wot, sir?”

“A Frogtown racer.”

“Wy, bless me soul, Hi never ‘eard of it sir.”

“What! never heard of a Frogtown racer, the commonest of all American drinks – what they put children on to as soon as they are weaned? Very well. I’ll try elsewhere.

“The same conversation would be repeated in all the bars – Champs Elysee, Place de Madeline, rue de l’Opera, etc. Finally one night, pretending great vexation that so simple and common an American drink could not be served, he asked the privilege of making one himself. This was granted, the ingredients furnished and the racer concocted. The barkeeper watched the process very closely, and next day Nat found, done in soap work on the great mirror behind the bar:

*****************************************

* FROGTOWN RACER *

* NEW AMERICAN DRINK *

******************************************

and “tout Paris” consuming the article. He always has claimed that he was entitled to a large commission which he never got. At all events, the consumers found a thirst-quencher which fulfilled the conditions which Dr Joyce claimed for the shillelah, “light to the hand and pleasant to the head.”

Now I want a Frogtown racer. (I also imagine a song “Frogtown racer, that’s a drink, Doo-da, doo-da…”) I post the anecdote not only for its own boozy sake but in the hope someone can come up with independent verification of its existence… although, come to think of it, it may well have been the invention of an exuberant and sloshed Globe reporter.

https://languagehat.com/frogtown-racer/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18960