In 1918, William Jennings Bryan predicted that "ten years from now, hundreds of thousands of men who voted against us and struggled to keep the saloon, will go down on their knees and thank God they were overwhelmed at the ballot-box and this temptation far removed from them."

Decades later, the demise of Prohibition is still worth celebrating. The Women's Christian Temperance Union still exists, but thanks to Crosby Gaige's Cocktail Guide and Ladies’ Companion, so does their namesake beverage. Gaige's measurements render 13 1/2 oz (plus two teaspoons) of cocktail; Bostonist has divided by six, rounded up to the nearest quarter ounce, and adjusted the bitterness, erring on the side of shrill:

W.C.T.U.

1 1/4 oz brandy
1 1/4 oz dry vermouth
2 dashes Angostura bitters (or 3!)
2 dashes orange bitters (or 3!)

Stir with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass, and garnish with lemon peel or slice of ripe peach. If you're using the former (we are), twist some oil out of that peel while you're at it. "This simple operation transforms a mediocre cocktail into a good one," writes David Embury,* "and raises a good cocktail to the level of frankincense and myrrh!" This is a footnote in his wonderful, curmudgeonly The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, first published in 1948 and recently reissued by Mud Puddle Books.

The same publisher has also brought Harry McElhone's Barflies & Cocktails back into print. That slimmer, far less theoretical volume, first published in Paris during Prohibition, gives us the following tribute to those who suffered through that era back in les États-Unis, with a news clipping from the Chicago Tribune, January 27th, 1924:

Hardly has Boston added to the Gaiety of Nations by adding to Webster's dictionary the opprobrious term of "scoff-law" to indicate the chap who indicts the bootlegger, when Paris comes back with a "wet answer"—Jock, the genial bartender of Harry's New York Bar, yesterday invented the Scoff-law Cocktail, and it has already become exceedingly popular among American prohibition dodgers.

Scoff-law Cocktail

1 or 2 dashes orange bitters
1 oz rye (we're using the Rittenhouse that's miraculously appeared at our neighborhood liquor stores)
1 oz French vermouth
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz grenadine (some suggest substituting green Chartreuse)

We've taken the liberty of rendering fractions into ounces and increasing (possibly overcompensating) the bitters. Jock left no instructions, but we're shaking it hard.

Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and, optionally, add a twist of lemon to the Gaiety of Nations.

Top: Scoff-law Cocktail, and some helpful literature. Middle: One of the BPL's two non-circulating copies of Crosby Gaige's Cocktail Guide and Ladies’ Companion (New York: "Published for hussies and homebodies by M. Barrows and company," 1941). Bottom, right: Georgia Hopley, prohibition agent, from the Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0003451, courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, via the Library of Congress's American Memory.