Noted essayist and tippler H. L. Mencken once wrote that the cocktail was "the greatest of all the contributions of the American way of life to the salvation of humanity." While Mencken's effusive evaluation of the cocktail might be challenged today, the cocktail and the cocktail party remain a distinctively American contribution to the social landscape of the twentieth century.

Although the cocktail party is most closely associated with the Cold War era, Americans were toasting with mixed drinks well before the 1950s. The origin of the word cocktail remains the subject of some debate, with a few bold scholars giving the honors to the troops of George Washington, who raised a toast to the "cock tail" that adorned the General's hat. Whatever its origins, by the 1880s the cocktail had become an American institution, and by the turn of the century women's magazines included recipes...