Imbibe! (28 page)

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
The sugar cube is traditional (use a whole standard cube). I’ve always found, though, that this drink responds exceptionally well to a scant teaspoon of real gum syrup (i.e., with the gum Arabic in it; see Chapter 9) instead. Others call for bourbon. Nowadays, nobody in New Orleans who’s serious about the Sazerac would make it with anything but rye whiskey. Since the days of the flatboats, New Orleans always was a rye town. The six-year-old rye the Sazerac company is selling at the time of this writing does a fine job, as does the Rittenhouse Bonded rye. In New Orleans, most people use plain old Old Overholt, which makes a perfectly acceptable drink, although not without room for improvement. Or you can go the cognac route: the drink was originally made with Sazerac de Forge et Fils cognac, a brand that perished in the phylloxera epidemic of the 1880s. The occasional bottle of true Sazerac still turns up at auction; good luck. Otherwise, whatever cognac you use, don’t skimp on the quality. Perhaps best of all is a combination of cognac and rye, as Dale DeGroff likes to deploy (go with 1½ ounces cognac and ½ ounce rye). If, however, you can get your hands on some good Hollands, be aware that it responds exceptionally well to the Sazerac treatment (the Sazerac House made many a Gin Cocktail, back in the day). Some recipes supplement the Peychaud’s with Angostura bitters. Don’t; as a side-by-side taste test of this formula made with just Peychaud’s, just Angostura, or a mixture of the two will handily prove, the bitters do make a difference. There’s just something about the way the Peychaud’s interacts with the absinthe that moves the whole shebang from the “excellent” column into the “unforgettable” one, particularly if you’re using a good-quality real absinthe. The Herbsaint they use in New Orleans as a substitute isn’t bad, by any means, but it’s sweeter and less complex than the real McCoy. If used only in Sazeracs, you’ll be able to squeeze hundreds of ’em out of one $100 bottle.

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
To “frappé” a glass is to fill it with shaved or finely cracked ice. The Sazerac House’s technique of stirring this drink in one small bar-glass and straining it into another has become enshrined in tradition, and it’s still generally made that way—even though the small bar-glass hasn’t been otherwise used for mixing for four or five generations and it’s easier to use a regular mixing glass. Which glass you mix it in affects the taste of the drink not a whit, so stir where you like. But whichever you use, give it a good, long stir. How long is enough? In a mixing glass with plenty of cracked ice, twenty seconds will do; in a small bar-glass with less ice, you may need more. Handy’s formula deploys the twist before mixing, but if ever there was a drink that cries out for the terminal spray of lemon oil, it’s this. As for rinsing the glass with absinthe, Paul Gustings, the best present-day New Orleans Sazerac maker, does a neat little thing where he puts some Herbsaint in the bottom of the chilled glass and then gives it a little toss in the air, with enough English on it for the liqueur to spin up the sides of the glass and coat it. If you can master that . . .

Judging by their elaborately printed list, the boys behind the bar at Mart Ackermann’s Saloon in Toronto sure knew a mess of mixed drinks. One hundred and seven of them, to be precise. All the old favorites, to be sure—the Mint Juleps, Sherry Cobblers, Tom and Jerries, etc. But the boys didn’t stop there; they went on beyond zebra with a vengeance. The list, which has the year 1856 written in by hand, is packed with things like the “Canadian Favourite,” the “American Standard,” the “Silistrian Smash,” the “Esplanade Cobbler” and the supremely enigmatic “Maelstrom Tost.” The Cobblers number to thirteen, the Smashes to fifteen, the Punches to eighteen. There are even eight Fixes—and eight Cocktails. Gin, Brandy, Whiskey, as you would expect. Champagne, which is novel, but comprehensible. But then there’s a “Dublin” Cocktail. An “Ontario” Cocktail. A Cocktail “a la Mode.” Even an “Omar Pasha” Cocktail. Now, the Dublin and the Ontario can be tentatively deciphered with the application of reason, Irish whiskey and Canadian whiskey being the likely X-factors. The Cocktail a la Mode? Probably a Fancy Cocktail, as in Jerry Thomas. But the story of the Crimean War hero Omar Pasha, who had recently attained celebrity among the peoples of the British Empire when his Turkish army defeated forty thousand Russians at the battle of Eupatoria, offers few clues as to what might be in a Cocktail bearing his name.

It’s a matter of chance that the list at hand, by far the earliest such piece of ephemera I’ve come across, is from Toronto; if a contemporary one from a drink palace in New York or Cincinnati or Boston or San Francisco or Washington, D.C., were available, it would doubtless show the same thing happening. Whatever went into it, and we have no earthly idea, the Omar Pasha Cocktail marks the beginning of the evolution of “Cocktail” from a term for the Bittered Sling and a few simple variations to a generic term for any short, iced drink. Today, a Cocktail that doesn’t telegraph its composition with its name is completely unremarkable; in 1856, it was a novelty (the Omar Pasha is in fact the first on record). It wouldn’t remain so for long. As the American bar evolved and mixing drinks became more and more demanding (and lucrative), bartenders began to treat the drinks they made as works of art. Art is no respecter of boundaries, and once the humble Cocktail became a work of art it found itself harboring all kinds of ingredients that it had once rigorously excluded (citrus, eggs), and excluding ones that had once defined it (spirits, bitters). If the Immortal Willard had whipped up a mess of cognac, port, sugar, and egg and tried to palm it off on one of his clients as a Cocktail, that client would have assumed that the master’s hand had lost its cunning and removed his business elsewhere. By the time the Civil War broke out, such things were possible.

Much of this artistic impulse was expended in citrusing Cocktails or vermouthing them; you’ll find those formulae in the next two sections. Here you’ll find the miscellaneous ones, a somewhat motley collection of Cocktails that go beyond the base category in their ingredients, their nomenclature, or both.

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:
In the latter years of the century, it was discovered that a cube or lump of sugar in the bottom of the glass, saturated with the bitters, will dissolve slowly, infusing the drink as it does; the standard Domino Dot works perfectly for this, holding as it does ½ teaspoon of sugar. In 1895, George Kappeler suggested Peychaud’s bitters as an alternative to the traditional Angostura. I find them particularly effective if I’m adding brandy, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Jerry Thomas and his contemporaries preferred broken or cracked ice in their Champagne Cocktails, doubtlessly because they disappeared them so fast there was little danger of dilution. Later in the century, when giants ceased to walk the land, the Cocktails were smaller, dryer, and used a single lump of ice, which was far less likely to water down the champagne.

As for the wine. If complete authenticity is a priority, a (sweeter) sec or even a demi-sec should be used. On the other hand, the brut champagne that came in late in the century (famed “King of the Dudes” Evander Berry Wall claims it was his exquisite taste responsible for this, and it may well have been) makes for a better Cocktail. In any case, one bottle of champagne will yield six small Cocktails, not large ones. Some—the
Steward & Barkeeper’s Manual
, anyway—liked to disburse the stuff with a heavier hand: “One quart bottle,” its author notes, “will make a little over four large cocktails.” To me, this is more like it, but you must of course follow the dictates of your conscience.

There are, of course, variations and refinements. I must confess that I’m shamefully partial to the hot-rails-to-hell practice Delaware mixologist Joseph Haywood recorded in 1898 of adding “one-half glass of brandy,” although I usually settle with one-quarter glass, or ½ ounce, of VSOP cognac or better.

 

NOTES ON EXECUTION:
By “shake,” Thomas here clearly means “pour back and forth.” This makes for a cold and foamy drink, but one that flattens quickly; better have another lined up. Before long, the accepted practice was, as the
Steward & Barkeeper’s Manual
instructed, to “agitate well with a spoon.” Later, once the bittered sugar cube became standard, even this was felt to be too much for the drink. The admonition in Boothby’s
World’s Drinks
from 1908 was typical: “Never stir . . . this beverage.” This was calculated to keep the bubbles streaming up from the cube as long as possible and the drink almost as dry as naked champagne.