Charles H. Baker Jr.

He was born on Christmas Day in 1895 in Zellwood, Florida, to Jane Paul Baker (1859–1916) and Charles Henry Baker Sr. (1848–1924). Both of his parents were from Pennsylvania.Bakers in the 1900 US Census in Zellwood, Florida He later attended Trinity College. By 1918, he was working at Norton Abrasives as a grinder in Worcester, Massachusetts;World War I draft registration. he later worked as a district sales manager. He moved to New York City, where he worked as a magazine editor and submitted stories to small publications. In 1932, Baker met Pauline Elizabeth Paulsen, an heiress to the Paulsen mining fortune, on a world cruise where he had signed on as the cruise line's publicist.Baker, Charles H. Jr., The Gentleman's Companion, Volume II. After they were married they had built for them an art deco house called Java Head in Coconut Grove, Florida, in which they lived for thirty years.Dunlop, Beth, Miami: Trends and Traditions; New York: The Montacelli Press, 1996, page 104 They built a second house in Coconut Grove called Java Head East, where they lived in the 1960s. They later moved to Naples, Florida.

Baker spent much of his life traveling the world and chronicling food and drink recipes for magazines like Esquire, Town & Country, and Gourmet, for which he wrote a column during the 1940s called "Here's How".[http://www.epicurious.com/features/news/dailydish/122506 Epicurious]{{Dead link|date=July 2020 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} Baker collected many of those recipes in his two-volume set The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery and Drinking Book, originally published in 1939 by Derrydale Press.{{cite news |title=Latin-American Food |work=Los Angeles Times |date=July 11, 1951 }} John J. Poister in 1983 wrote, "Volume II of The Gentleman's Companion, by Charles H. Baker Jr., is the best book on exotic drinks I have ever encountered".John J. Poister; Wine Lover's Drink Book; page 71 Condé Nast contributing writer St. John Frizell wrote, "It's his prose, not his recipes, that deserves a place in the canon of culinary literature ... at times humorously grandiloquent, at times intimate and familiar, Baker fills his stories with colorful details about his environment and his drinking companions — Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner among them". While his culinary nonfiction garnered Baker much praise, he was less well regarded as a novelist. His only novel, Blood of the Lamb, was published in 1946 by Rinehart & Company. About it, a Time reviewer wrote in the magazine's April 22, 1946, issue, "Blood of the Lamb is not much of a novel, but it is long on local color, loud piety, snuff, 'stump liquor' and local talk"{{cite news |title=Florida Flatwoods |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,792849,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071202043624/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,792849,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 2, 2007 |publisher=Time |date=April 22, 1946 |access-date=2007-05-21 }}

{{blockquote|Words to the Wise No. VII. Offering up an earnest plea for recentness in all eggs to be used in cocktails or drinks of any kind, for that matter. A stale or storage egg in a decent mixed drink is like a stale or storage joke in critical and intelligent company. Eschew them rabidly. If really fresh eggs can't be had, mix other type drinks, for the result will reflect no merit round the hearth, no matter how hospitable it may be.[http://www.missginsu.com/2006/08/food-quote-friday-charles-h-baker-jr.html Hedonista]|Charles H. Baker Jr. in The Gentlemen's Companion: Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask}}

Some of Baker's exotic and often esoteric drink recipes from The Gentleman's Companion are once again finding favor at modern cocktail bars specializing in classic drinks, such as Manhattan's Pegu Club, where Baker's "Jimmie Roosevelt"—a mixture of champagne, cognac, and Chartreuse liqueur—was found on the menu.

He died on November 11, 1987, in Naples, Florida.Social Security Death Index.{{Clarify|date=March 2012}}Florida Death Index.{{Clarify|date=March 2012}}

• Rejections of 1927. (1928. Edited by Baker).[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12544489 Worldcat]
• The Gentleman's Companion (two volumes, 1939 edition).{{cite news |first=Edward Larocque |last=Tinker|title=New editions, fine or otherwise |work=The New York Times |date=August 25, 1940}}The New York Public Library{{cite news |title=The Eclectic Epicure|newspaper=The Washington Post |date=November 19, 1939 }}
• Blood of the Lamb (1946).{{cite news |first=Charles|last=Poore|author-link=Craig Claiborne |title=Books of the Times; Powerful Nemesis Is Abandoned Time Is Early in This Century|work=The New York Times |date=April 20, 1946}}ASIN B000OEHEPQ
• The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask (1946 edition).
• The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery Book or Around the World with Knife, Fork, and Spoon (1946 edition).ASIN B000KTPRPO
• The Gentleman's Companion: Being an Exotic Cookery/Drinking Book (combined volume I and II) (1946 edition){{cite news |title=Review |publisher=Virginia Quarterly Review|date= August 1982 |page=138}}; ASIN B000E0XQZW
• Knife, Fork, and Spoon: Eating Around the World (1992).{{Cite book|isbn = 1-58667-049-2|title = Knife, Fork and Spoon: Eating Around the World|last1 = Charles h. Baker|first1 = Jr|date = November 2000}}
• The Esquire Culinary Companion (1959).ASIN B000FD7KLO{{cite news |first=Craig |last=Claiborne |author-link=Craig Claiborne |title=Recipe for Pleasure; The Esquire Culinary Companion |publisher=The New York Times Book Review |date=August 2, 1959}}
• The South American Gentleman's Companion (1951).OCLC 588195

{{Reflist|2}}

• [http://www.thingsasian.com/stories-photos/3621 Things Asian: Charles H. Baker Jr.]
• [http://www.grovebook.com/GA38.htm Detailed bibliography]

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Category:1895 births

Category:1987 deaths

Category:American food writers

Category:Writers from Florida

Category:20th-century American essayists