It’s time for the Kentucky Derby, and it is time to again ponder over that traditional southern libation – the mint julep.

Eudora Welty once called the mint julep “that magic ingredient” of the South. It is basically a simple drink usually containing only water, sugar, mint and bourbon or brandy.

The mint julep appears to have been born in Virginia and grown up in Kentucky. It is a legendary drink, but like all legends, fact and fiction merge. We think of the mint julep as a southern beverage associated with the Kentucky Derby, but the drink was the favorite at New York’s Long Island Derby 38 years before the first Kentucky Derby was ever run.

Columbus newspapers of the 1830s and 1840s often referred to mint juleps but not in a flattering manner. They were either lampooning those who had to begin their day with a mint julep or two or lambasting congressmen for apparently drinking too many, too often.

Over the years I have become the repository for family cookbooks, many from the 1800s and one even dating to 1825. With ancestors having arrived in Lowndes County from Alabama, Virginia and Georgia during the mid-1830s, the cookbooks provide insight into the original mint juleps of Columbus.

Here in Columbus the mint julep recipes from at least three different mid-1800s homes have survived. There is the Harris-Hardy recipe from Whitehall. the Billups recipe from Snowdoun and the Young recipe from Waverly. All three families had basically the same recipe and it is not the sweet concoction so often served now.

In Snowdoun, a home purchased from Gov. Whitfield by John Billups in the mid-1860s, I came across a battered copy of “The Virginia Housewife.” It had belonged to Sally Govan Billups’ mother and was dated 1825. It contained the recipe for a mint cordial.
That was a liqueur that was made with “French brandy” using basically the same recipe as a mint julep and containing only mint, water, sugar and brandy. The recipe did, however, specify that you should, “Pick the mint early in the morning while the dew is on it.”

The oldest Columbus mint julep recipe that I found was in Sally Billups’ 1866 copy of “Verstille’s Southern Cookery.” Its recipe was simply: Mint Julep “Sweeten a glass of water and add whisky or brandy to the taste; drop in two or three sprigs of mint and a lump of ice; it is then ready to drink.”

My grandmother, Lenore Hardy Billups, studied art at Newcomb College in New Orleans, 1909-1913, and I have her “1905 Times Picayune Creole Cookbook.” It contains one julep recipe, the Mint Julep a la Creole. in addition to the basic mint, water, sugar and whisky or brandy it also contains lemon, orange and strawberries. Interestingly, an 1840 Natchez newspaper reported that “Mr. Alexander, at the Steam-Boat Hotel, puts strawberries in his mint juleps.”

My grandmother’s mint juleps, though, were made as her mother taught her at Whitehall. That recipe for the Whitehall Mint Julep was published nationally after Eudora Welty’s 1939 interview with her at Whitehall. The interview still often appears in books and national publications whenever the history of mint juleps is discussed.

It is a recipe in which sugar water and mint are whispered over a silver goblet filled with bourbon and crushed ice. Interestingly, ice has been available in Columbus and Aberdeen since the 1830s. In the winter ice would be cut in northern lakes and shipped by boat in cold weather to mobile. It would then be brought up the Tombigbee by steamboat and when landed stored in pits lined and insulated with hay.

According to Welty, “A collection of recipes from the old South is no more complete than the old south itself without that magic ingredient, the mint julep. In the fine old city of Columbus, in the northeastern part of the state, hospitality for many years is said to have reached its height in Whitehall, the home of Mr. and Mrs. T.C. Billups.”

The Whitehall Mint Julep recipe: Dissolve sugar in water. Bruise a mint leaf in a tablespoon of the sugar water then remove the leaf. Fill a silver goblet with crushed ice and add the tablespoon of mint and sugar water. Then fill the goblet with good bourbon. Put in a sprig of mint and let stand until the silver goblet is frosted and then “serve rapidly.”

The old recipe from Waverly has also survived. It is the same as the Whitehall recipe except at Waverly, rather than simply dissolving sugar in water, a simple syrup was made by boiling the sugar water. That common recipe is not surprising as Mrs Harris at Whitehall and Mrs Young at Waverly were sisters.

In the mid-1800s mint juleps were sometimes called a “smile.” In 1866 the Macon Beacon newspaper explained, “Smiles are the sunshine of the soul … hence the origin of calling mint juleps smiles.”

My first real realization that a mint julep was not just some sweet alcohol concoction came when I was about to leave home for Ole Miss. My grandmother informed me that before I went to “The University” I needed to know the proper way to make a mint julep.

She directed me into the kitchen and explained the importance of a proper drink and showed me how to make our family’s traditional “Whitehall Mint Julep” the way her mother had once showed her and who in turn had been taught by her mother. The recipe she gave me was the same as the one she gave Eudora Welty in 1939.

Except she added that fine bourbon was to be used and I was to always hold the goblet by its stem. She said people should be told to hold it by its stem so as to not mess up the frosted side. She then added that the real reason was that when holding the goblet by its side the warmth of your hand would melt the ice and dilute good bourbon.

As Eudora Welty said at the conclusion of my grandmother’s interview, “Who could ask for anything more?”

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].

READER FAVORITES

• 

  Our View: Selfish people don’t plant flowers

  By Dispatch Editorial Board • 17 hours ago