Origins? Dunno. History? Beats me.

Thanks to Ben down at Zig Zag Cafe for turning me on to this one. I was looking for another good calvados cocktail, and this one fits the bill perfectly. Ben used a nice French calvados that gave the drink the taste of fresh fruit; at home, I tried it with Clear Creek’s Eau de Vie de Pomme, which is somewhat drier, but still gives a nice, layered experience.

Ante

• 1 1/4 ounce Calvados
• 1/2 ounce Dubonnet rouge
• 1/4 ounce Cointreau
• dash Angostura

Stir with ice; strain into chilled glass; figure out the rest.

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Tags: Calvados, Drinks, Vermouth by Paul
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On February 7, 1882, a former hod-carrier and assistant plumber from Boston named John L. Sullivan met Paddy Ryan in a bareknuckle heavyweight bout in Mississippi City, Mississippi. Sullivan was a rising star in boxing–having gone pro in 1877 after knocking celebrated boxer Tom Scannel into the orchestra pit at Boston’s Dudley Street Opera House, and having scored a legendary knockout against John “Bull’s Head Terror” Flood during a match on a floating barge in the Hudson River just a year previous.

But in 1882, Ryan was the champ–until February 7. The fight, which had initially been scheduled to take place in New Orleans until the governor issued a proclamation against it, was a London Rules, $2,500 winner-take-all bout, and Sullivan owned it from the beginning. By the ninth round, Sullivan’s relentless attacks had withered Ryan’s defenses, and after a glancing right to the jaw, Ryan hugged the mat and Sullivan took the title (informal as it was in those days) of heavyweight champion of the world. It was a position he’d hold for the next ten years.

Bartenders in that era knew a thing or two about bareknuckle boxing. Ryan had first established his sparring reputation while running a saloon in upstate New York. And Sullivan had more than a passing knowledge of such places; he spent his teenage years looking for fights in Boston barrooms, and late in his life, he was fond of saying that the only fighter that ever beat him was whiskey. Indeed, many sportswriters of the era cited Sullivan’s indulgent lifestyle as a key factor in his 1892 loss of the championship to Jim Corbett.

Mississippi Punch is a bareknuckle bout in a glass. A solid four ounces of liquor goes into one glass of punch, with just a light touch of lemon and sugar to take the edge off. Despite its fearsome strength, Mississippi Punch is quite a tasty tipple–the blend of brandy, rum and bourbon roughhousing about in the glass, but still all working together, like the defensive line on a football team.

First appearing in print in Jerry Thomas’ landmark The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, or The Bon-Vivant’s Companion, Mississippi Punch is a formidable concoction, yet one worth getting to know. Just make sure you call it “sir.”

Mississippi Punch (Thomas’ recipe)

• 1 wine-glass of brandy [2 ounces]
• 1/2 do. Jamaica rum [1 ounce]
• 1/2. do. Bourbon whiskey [1 ounce]
• 1/2 do. water [ignore this if you like--your ice adds what you need]
• 1 1/2 table-spoonful of powdered white sugar [do yourself a favor and cut this back to 2 teaspoons]
• 1/4 of a large lemon [1/2 ounce]

Fill a tumbler with shaved ice.
The above must be well shaken, and to those who like their draughts “like linked sweetness long drawn out,” let them use a glass tube or straw to sip the nectar through. The top of this punch should be ornamented with small pieces of orange, and berries in season.

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Tags: Bourbon, Brandy, Drinks, Gettin' Jerry With It, Rum by Paul
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It’s been a busy couple of weeks around here, and the future doesn’t look much better. Between family obligations, household issues and other life matters that deserve no further attention in this space, there hasn’t been much time to ponder vital Cocktail Chronicles-type questions–such as, “how much Benedictine do you really need to use in a Derby?,” or “what happens if you soak a vanilla bean in Lemon Hart Demerara overproof for a week, then add muscovado syrup to bring it down to a reasonable proof and let it age for a month?”

A hectic time, as you can tell.

But even on hectic days, thirst comes calling. And the busier and more stressful the day (or the slower and lazier–funny how much those sometimes have in common), the more pressing is the need for a straightforward, no-nonsense chin-bracer–the sort of drink that requires little to no effort to make, but offers unparalleled excellence in its ability to moisten the clay with the utmost efficiency and style. On these sorts of days, only one drink will do: the Old Fashioned.

True to its name, the Old Fashioned is a reaaally old drink–it predates Jerry Thomas, stretching back into the Dark Ages of American mixology. But I’ll spare you the historic details–did I mention I’ve been busy?–and get right down to business.

There are several ways to make an Old Fashioned; most of them, unfortunately, are wrong. While I usually try to steer clear of the ideological arguments that frequently break out over various cocktails, the Old Fashioned is such a key weapon in any mixological arsenal that I feel it’s important to make an exception and throw down the Cocktail Chronicles’ guidelines for making a proper drink. To wit:

• No water or soda water shall be added to the drink (aside from the few drops–DROPS!– necessary to dissolve the sugar). If you’re a simple syrup-type person, first, recognize you’re not being completely authentic–then, pull out a rich 2:1 demerara syrup, or an old-style gomme syrup, if you’ve got any on hand. Whatever you use, use it sparingly–the Old Fashioned is not meant to be overly sweet.
• No fruit shall be muddled in the drink. Following on the above rule, an Old Fashioned is about whiskey, unsullied and undiluted–mashing up a bunch of oranges and day-glo cherries in the glass before adding the spirit is, in my humble estimation, a crime against nature. I know, everybody does it that way now, and it’s hard to order an Old Fashioned in a bar without getting a bunch of fruity goo floating in a sea of whiskey-flavored seltzer. But shouldn’t it be possible to create some sort of upswell of support where we restore the default on the Old Fashioned to the no-soda-no-muddling side? I mean, it can always be added to the drink for those who lack the intestinal fortitude to consume a real cocktail, but in the name of good whiskey and educated drinking, couldn’t the baseline be the good version, as pure as mother’s milk, saving the watery slime for those who actually like it enough to ask for it?
• Break out the good stuff. Not the great stuff–what, are you nuts?–but use a decent whiskey in the Old Fashioned. Recently I’ve been enjoying the bonded Old Granddad in these–it seems fitting, somehow–but I’m also fond of Old Fashioneds made with Wild Turkey 101, Weller 12-year-old, Knob Creek and Maker’s Mark. The drink is quite good with rye, too (another point in the OF’s favor), but you want one with a little assertiveness to it, such as Wild Turkey Rye or Van Winkle Family Reserve (I’ve heard the bonded Rittenhouse is excellent, though I have yet to lay hands on a bottle).
• For garnish, all you need is a strip of orange or lemon peel (if you just can’t get past the smushing-the-fruit thing, toss the peel in the glass when you first start out with the sugar, water and bitters, then work it out of your system through the honest labor of muddling). If you’re a bartender and you serve an Old Fashioned to me with full fruit regalia, I won’t make a fuss–add the orange wheel and cherry if you feel the need, but just place them on the top so I can flick them aside once you’ve turned your back.

Is creating a by-the-books Old Fashioned, sans fizzy water and fruity muck, the most important thing in the world? Of course not. But when you’ve had a bitch of a day, and a look at the calendar reveals a whole sequence of them still ahead of you, it can sure seem that way.

Old Fashioned

• 1 smallish sugar cube (or 1/2 to 1 tsp sugar, to taste) OR 1-2 tsp gomme syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura or Fee’s Old-Fashioned Aromatic Bitters
• a few drops of water
• 2 ounces bourbon or rye (or 3–what the hell)
• strip of orange or lemon peel

Place the sugar in an Old Fashioned glass, moisten with the water and bitters then muddle until dissolved (chuck the fruit peel in, if you like–I don’t). Add the whiskey, give it a quick stir, then add a big chunk of ice or two and stir again. Hit it.

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Tags: Bourbon, Drinks, Rye by Paul
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File this one in the “Annoying Name, Excellent Drink” category.

When I encountered this cocktail in various bartending guides, I usually breezed right past it, put off by its back-slapping, overly familiar name, attached to the drink no doubt to serve as a flippant flag to the unwitting drinker that the Bobby Burns is a Scotch-containing concoction. (Why the hell they gotta do that? Scotch has the Rob Roy, the Glasgow, the Highland, the Thistle and the Bobby Burns, and Irish whiskey has the Emerald, the Blarney Stone, the Shamrock, the Tipperary and the Paddy Cocktail, among others–annoying trend, in my humble opinion). But once I got past the name, I discovered the Bobby Burns is a truly excellent cocktail.

Origins are hazy, but in his Joy of Mixology, Gary Regan says Old Waldorf Bar Days, by Albert Stevens Crockett, strongly suggests the drink originated in that venerable establishment. But I have my doubts–Crockett’s book was published in 1931, and features not a Bobby Burns but a Robert Burns, which has a similar base of Scotch and Italian vermouth (basically a Rob Roy), but then completes the drink with a dash each of absinthe and orange bitters. But just a year previous, Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book printed a recipe more familiar to contemporary guides, with the Scotch and Italian vermouth base, but finished with dashes of Benedictine. “One of the very best Whisky cocktails,” Craddock wrote, “a very fast mover on St. Andrew’s Day.”

Though Craddock’s recipe has changed over time–he called for equal parts whisky and vermouth, whereas recent recipes typically list around a 2:1 ratio–the Bobby Burns is still distinguished by its finishing touch: 2 dashes of Benedictine.

Well, usually.

In The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury lists two variations for the Bobby Burns, one with Benedictine, and the other–Embury’s preferred variation–with Drambuie. (Embury was also working with a recipe that called for a dash of angostura–but says an interesting variation may be obtained by substituting Peychaud’s for angostura, as Peychaud’s tends to marry better with Scotch.)

Having tried the cocktail both ways, I come down on Embury’s side–Drambuie makes a smoother drink, though the Benedictine version is no slouch. Whichever way you choose to try it–and you should try both, to see which you prefer–the Bobby Burns is worth a shot. Just summon up your nerve to get past the name, and go for it.

Bobby Burns

• 2 ounces blended Scotch whisky
• 1 ounce Italian vermouth
• 1 dash Angostura bitters (or if you have Peychaud’s on hand, give that a spin)
• 2 dashes Drambuie OR Benedictine

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass; twist a piece of lemon peel over the drink, and add the twist as garnish.

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Tags: Drinks, Scotch, Vermouth by Paul
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When it comes to alcoholic beverages, I’m not usually the squeamish type. True, it took me a while to warm up to the idea of mixing raw eggs with gin and cream, then serving it in a glass–but if I hadn’t rolled up my sleeves and stiffened my backbone prior to making my first Ramos Gin Fizz, I never would have enjoyed one of the finest drinks in creation.

Still, I have my limits. There are a great many drinks that shall never pass my lips, and while most I’ll refuse due to their obvious and irredeemable lameness, there are some that venture in directions no alcoholic beverage should ever be forced to go. Popov and Robitussin is one such libation; Rooster Beer, aka Cock Ale, is another.

The recipe is worth passing along, if for no other reason than to best convey the phenomenally weird tastes our ancestors possessed. I’m drawing the description from Edward Spencer’s The Flowing Bowl, published in London in 1903 (Kingsley Amis also published a version in his On Drink, from 1972), but Spencer cites as his source “The English Housewyfe, containing the inward and outward Vertues which ought to be in a complete Woman, published by Nicholas Okes at the sign of the golden Unicorne, in 1631.” In addition to recipes for drinks such as White Bastard, Muskadine and Ebulum (“to a hogshead of strong ale take a heap’d bushel of elderberries…), the book contains not one, but two listings for “Cock Ale.” I’ll relay only the most explicit:

Take an old red, or other cock, and boyle him indifferent well; then flea [flay] his skin clean off, and beat him flesh and bones in a stone mortar all to mash[the other recipe also states that, for the cock, "the older the better," and that "you must craw and gut him when you flea him"] , then slice into him half a pound of dates, two nutmegs quartered, two or three blaids of mace, four cloves; and put to all this two quarts of sack that is very good; stop all this up very close that no air may get to it for the space of sixteen hours; then tun eight gallons of strong ale into your barrel so timely as it may have done working at the sixteen hours’ end; and then put thereinto your infusion and stop it close for five days, then bottle it in stone bottles; be sure your corks are very good, and tye them with pack-thread; and about a fortnight or three weeks after you may begin to drink of it; you must also put into your infusion two pound of raisins of the sun stoned.

When it comes to kitchen mixology, I’m stickin’ with falernum.

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Tags: Drinks, General by Paul
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