--- title: The Mint Julep Controversy | TIME description: Mark Kurlansky, author of 'The Food of a Younger Land,' makes competing recipes for mint juleps from the 1930s canonical: https://time.com/video/Hn4CQhih/ og:title: The Mint Julep Controversy og:description: Mark Kurlansky, author of 'The Food of a Younger Land,' makes competing recipes for mint juleps from the 1930s og:url: https://time.com/video/Hn4CQhih/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Hn4CQhih/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Mint Julep Controversy twitter:description: Mark Kurlansky, author of 'The Food of a Younger Land,' makes competing recipes for mint juleps from the 1930s twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Hn4CQhih/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The Mint Julep Controversy > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Mint Julep Controversy [Watch (HLS stream): The Mint Julep Controversy](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Hn4CQhih.m3u8) (3:41)  _Published 2009-05-08. Mark Kurlansky, author of 'The Food of a Younger Land,' makes competing recipes for mint juleps from the 1930s_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:09 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Hats, Mint Juleps & Roses: Kentucky Derby Staples Explained](/video/QLi9s4HE/) ### Hats, Mint Juleps & Roses: Kentucky Derby Staples Explained [The Nantucket Project: Larry Summers Has Some Choice Words for 'Our Newly Minted Corporate Citizens'](/video/xOgxdB72/) ### The Nantucket Project: Larry Summers Has Some Choice Words for 'Our Newly Minted Corporate Citizens' [Senator Jim DeMint: Spiritual Leader of the Tea Party](/video/yS740EkT/) ### Senator Jim DeMint: Spiritual Leader of the Tea Party --- ## Transcript >> I'm Mark Kurlansky and my new book is called, " The Food of a Younger Land ." Food writing that was done by the WPA's Federal Writers' Project. Their last attempt to project, which was never carried out because World War II started and WPA was canceled, but it was going to be an attempt at looking at food traditions' all over the United States. So they also asked for local food controversies. So, there were considerable [ unk ] controversies over clam chowder and one of the big Southern controversies was the correct way to make a mint julep. Any way you do it, there's sugar, water, mint and bourbon. A number of the articles collected here from Kentucky called the Original Kentucky Mint Julep. This is from people who believed that the original mint julep was from Kentucky, which may or may not have been. You just take some sugar and put a little water. Dissolve that, all that and then you put some crushed ice, cool it up with bourbon. Bourbon is a corn liquor. This will keep you happy. Traditionally made in certain parts of the south, aged in wide- oak barrels, one of the great American inventions, actually. This is the sprig of mint and that's it. The problem with it is you're not gonna get a lot of mint flavor, but perhaps in Kentucky they have a very unusually aromatic sprig of mint. That's very nice because, you know, it's nice bourbon. Start with a sugar and then just take some leaves because it works better if you take the leaves off of the stems. Just crush it in here, which will release more of the flavor where you can smell the difference. And it's interesting that a number of these recipes specified no fruit. So this-- See, this is mintier. America was a place that is divided into regions and they all have their own food and even from county to county, food would change and you always knew where you were by the kind of food that you ate. And so, if you travel around America, you sampled these changes in food instead of going into the identical fast food places along the highway that we do today. Eudora Welty, great Mississippi writer submitted a recipe to this project in which she said to take the sprig and crush it with your hands like this and then add it. >> You can imagine the [ unk ] doing that. >> Yes, I can. And I can imagine the [ unk ] doing this. It's great, great drink. >> Yeah. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Mint Julep Controversy","description":"Mark Kurlansky, author of 'The Food of a Younger Land,' makes competing recipes for mint juleps from the 1930s","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Hn4CQhih/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2009-05-08T20:28:28.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Hn4CQhih.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/Hn4CQhih/","duration":"PT3M41S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/Hn4CQhih/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```