Excerpts

INTRODUCTION When we first walked into the offices of Sterling Cooper, metaphorically speaking, we knew Mad Men was going to transport us to another time. It wasn't the retro look of the office furnishings or the décor, or even the fashions, though they helped. It was the background chorus of a hundred electric typewriters clicking away. Mad Men 's obsessive attention to period detail also extends to its food: what its characters eat and drink, how they eat and drink it, and where. We grew up in the 1960s just a few miles from Manhattan, so many of the foods and kitchen and restaurant scenes brought back childhood memories. When we saw Betty Draper serve Turkey Tetrazzini and stuffed celery, or Carla, the Draper's housekeeper, serve potato salad it was as if we had been transported back to our mothers' kitchens. When the Draper kids watch Don break out another bottle of Canadian Club or the neighbors come over for bridge night, it reminded us of nights we'd sneak halfway down the stairs in our pajamas to take a peak at our parents and their friends enjoying cocktails and cards. Judy has a long track record pairing food and literature in two previous cookbooks she co-authored, which naturally extended to curiosity about the food in Mad Men . But when friends learned we were writing a Mad Men -themed cookbook, many were surprised: there was food ? All they seemed to remember was a lot of drinking, and maybe Betty making breakfast or dinner in her kitchen. But there is plenty of food and drink in Mad Men . Sometimes it's front and center, but often it's a background detail, the visual equivalent of those clicking typewriters, but a detail that lends great authenticity. Think of Don and Roger Sterling's power lunch at The Grand Central Oyster Bar; Don and Bobbi Barrett's intimate dinner conversation while waiting for their Steak Tartare at Sardi's; and the buffet tables laden with holiday treats the staff dances past at the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Christmas Party. When you saw Joan Harris's Hawaiian-themed New Year's Eve repast, or Betty's Around the World Dinner, didn't you want to pull up a chair? Our goal was to create a cookbook with recipes for food and drink that either appears in Mad Men , or was served in the 1960s by the bars and restaurants featured in the show. We were delighted by the eagerness of many of those establishments to contribute recipes and photographs to this book. For example, since Don and Roger Sterling ate there, The Grand Central Oyster Bar's recipe for Oysters Rockefeller has changed: but thanks to owner and executive chef Sandy Ingber we've been able include the version they would have been served. Sometimes tried and true recipes have survived the past half-century: the Caesar Salad at Keens Steakhouse remains the same, as does Sardi's Steak Tartar. Occasionally, we had to go digging for information on a cocktail or dish no longer on the menu at all: the Beverly Hills Hotel identified and sent us the recipe for a cocktail Pete Campbell sips poolside as a Royal Hawaiian, a cocktail they haven't served since the 1960s. There are times when we aren't shown what the characters are eating, as is the case when Don and Bethany Van Nuys dine at the elegant Barbetta restaurant near Times Square. Barbetta owner Laura Maioglio contributed two recipes that were on the menu in the early 1960s and which Don and Bethany might have enjoyed. We also wanted to remain true to how the food and drink we selected would have been prepared in the early 1960s, though we did occasionally use an appliance first introduced in the early 1970s: a food processor. Period authenticity becomes even more delicious when you have some historical context on the side--information about the restaurants, hotels, foods, chefs, and real-life personalities that feature in Mad Men or that shaped the culinary landscape of the times. For example, Beef Wellington was a favorite of President and Mrs. Kennedy, and their White House once served Avocado Mimosas at a State Dinner for the President of Pakistan in 1961. There are recipes here for both. We explore how public fascination with the 50th state, Hawaii, translated not just into the Hula Hoop craze and singer Don Ho's stardom, but the popularity of Polynesian-themed restaurants, cocktails and foods and include recipes for several of them. And you can't fully appreciate the presence of French restaurants and cuisine in Mad Men without understanding the revolution in American culinary tastes spawned by the 1961 publication of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Alfred A. Knopf). We pored over hundreds of cookbooks, magazines, and advertisements from the 1950s and 1960s in our pursuit of information and ideas. To be true to the era, we looked for cookbooks the characters might have used. When Joan Harris (formerly Holloway) made that crown roast in her tiny kitchen to serve at a dinner party, we turned to The Small Kitchen Cookbook by Nina Mortellito (Walker and Company, 1964) for a recipe. When Pete Campbell asks his new wife to make rib-eye in the pan, we thought a logical cookbook selection for Trudy cooking for her "ad man" would have been The Madison Avenue Cookbook by Alan Koehler (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962). Those cookbooks and magazines took us back to the 1960s and not only helped us choose and develop recipes, but enhanced our appreciation of how various food-related chores and even the different cocktails men and women favored tended to be gender specific. Which brings us to those cocktails. There are times when Sterling Cooper might aptly be renamed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (minus the firearms, though who knows what Bert Cooper keeps in his desk). The establishments frequented by Don Draper and his colleagues provided many of the cocktails for this book. For example, the recipes for a Sidecar and a Vesper come courtesy of P.J. Clarke's where Peggy Olson and others from Sterling Cooper celebrate her early copywriting success, and the Manhattan from The Oak Bar where Don and Roger sometimes stopped for a drink. To ensure an authentic Mad Men experience every recipe is introduced through a specific scene in the show. And to enhance your enjoyment of the food and drink we scoured period cookbooks and magazines for tips on throwing a successful cocktail or dinner party. We also compiled a small guide to some of the restaurants and bars frequented by Mad Men characters. On your next trip to New York stop by and tell them Don sent you. We, and a small army of volunteer recipe testers, cracked hundreds of eggs, baked at least a hundred pounds of butter and sugar into various pies and cakes, and poured gallons of gin, vodka and whiskey as we tested and retested recipes for this book (even when some didn't need retesting). We carved Crown Roasts and hams, shucked dozens of oysters and peeled pounds of potatoes, too. So, we can vouch for both the authenticity and the tastiness of the food and drink on these pages. Whether you like to cook, eat, drink, or simply enjoy devouring all things Mad Men , our hope is that this book will enhance your appreciation of the show and enrich your understanding of the times in which it is set. --Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin Excerpted from The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook: Inside the Kitchens, Bars, and Restaurants of Mad Men by Judy Gelman, Peter Zheutlin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.