September 2026

Written By Max Miller
 

Fact checking Tasting History and myself

 

Dear Tastorians,

A couple of weeks ago, I put out a video on the history of the Piña Colada. Hopefully you didn't notice, but that short video caused a whole mess of trouble during the editing  process. Here's what happened.

I followed my usual research process, which typically involves 10 to 20 hours of diving into old cookbooks, newspapers, and similar sources.  I was searching for the oldest Piña Colada recipe I could find, and many sources claimed it was in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book.

cover of the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book with an art deco cocktail glass with a marschino cherry

I actually have a facsimile  of that book on my shelf and, always wanting to confirm what secondary sources tell me, I pulled it down. Lo and  behold, there it was: a Piña Colada recipe. So, I moved forward with the episode, using this seemingly confirmed claim as part of the history.  

Fast-forward a few days and I'm in the middle of editing. I wanted to show the original recipe on screen and, rather than taking a picture of my copy with my phone, I found a digitized copy of the 1930 book online. I flipped to the page where the recipe should have been, but it wasn't there. I spent the next ten minutes looking back and forth between the book on my desk and the book on my computer. They appeared identical—same artwork, same typography—everything was the same except for that one rather important difference. 

I checked my copy again to make sure it wasn't a later edition. Nowhere did it say that it was. As far as I could tell, I had the 1930 edition sitting right in front of me. And then down the rabbit hole I went. 

Eventually, on an obscure Quora page from about a decade ago, I found someone mentioning that they loved the 1983 edition of The Savoy Cocktail Book  because it included a Piña Colada recipe added in the 1970s. The catch was that the 1983 edition had been styled to look almost exactly like the 1930 original. Artwork, font, layout and all.

That is what was sitting on my desk and nowhere in my copy does it say "1983 edition." The only clue was that the facsimile itself was printed in 2015, but there's nothing obvious telling you that what had been reproduced was an updated edition rather than the original 1930 text. I sort of think that should be illegal. 

But, as frustrated as I was, the video had been filmed, and there's no use crying over spilled Piña Colada. The only question was whether I could edit the mistake or if I had to completely rewrite and record again. Luckily, even though the supposed 1930 recipe was bunk, there were still newspaper descriptions of drinks called Piña Colada from before the famous 1954 version that we know and love today. So I was able to rework the history and remove the erroneous claim without starting completely from scratch. 

The reason I wanted to share this little behind-the-scenes disaster is because it's a perfect example of why it's so important to double-check your facts, even when you're confident you already know the answer. Or, as Mark Twain probably never said, despite constantly being credited with it: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." 

photo of mark twain with text: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." — I never said this

Also, if you missed the announcement, Tasting History: The Board Game is officially in the works! It's still being developed, but you can follow along and get updates here:   https://launchoracle.com/r/zMftyJh9 

 
 

And now for a few things I thought you might enjoy:

Last Month’s Videos

Serving it forth,

Max

 
Max Miller https://www.tastinghistory.com
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August 2026