Thread by @DigiVictorian

I'm currently researching the consumption of 'American Drinks' (i.e. cocktails) in Victorian Britain. They were widely available and fairly popular from the 1840s onwards... but not everybody was a fan!
(1862)

The term 'American Drinks' didn't always refer to alcohol. It covered a range of other exotic new drinks from the USA, usually involving sugar or ice. Ice cream soda (optimistically described here as 'healthy') seems to have become popular following the Paris Exhibition of 1867!

More here on the introduction of American ice cream soda fountains to Victorian London — "the most delicious and refreshing beverage ever quaffed"!
(1868)

Victorian commentators were often fascinated by the exotic names given to imported American drinks — they evidently offered a linguistic, as well as a liquid, encounter with American culture. I've found loads of articles just listing them!
(1861)

I love this perplexed response:

"with all the aid derived from the machine invented by Mr Babbage, we are at a loss to *calculate* the ingredients which enter into such mysterious compounds as 'apple-jack', 'white-nose', 'stonewall', 'chain-lightning', 'corpse reviver'."
(1868)

[This weird reference to Babbage’s research on mechanical computers is a joke about the fact that the verb ‘to calculate’ — when used in a non-mathematical context, as an alternative to ‘I think’ — was regarded as a stereotypically American slang term by the Victorians]