Joseph Gavin Duffy

1868–c. 1955

Links the pre-Prohibition American Bar to the post-Prohibition American bar

Duffy was a New York bartender prior to Prohibition, mainly at Ashland House, where he served an often high-profile crowd. Many years later, in the wake of repeal, Duffy wrote The Official Mixer’s Manual (1934) under the unexplained pseudonym Patrick Gavin Duffy, an ambitious project to collect, organize, and correctly represent all the cocktail recipes up to that point in a standard reference for the new marketplace. The book was later embraced and updated by James Beard.