My mother had two remedies for colds. One was chicken soup; the other was a mix of lemon and honey.
I never thought to ask her if she really believed these nostrums cured anything, but they certainly had psychological benefits — at least they made us all feel like we were doing something.
Continue reading “Home Remedies and the Penicillin Cocktail”
While I was working through the Brooklyn Cocktail’s evolution and formula for the previous post, my Bride brought home a couple of bottles of Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Rye whiskey.
One sip of Pennsylvania rye reminded me that in pre-Prohibition New York, the whiskey in your cocktail was likely very different from the Kentucky-style rye we’re most familiar with these days, Continue reading “Repairing the Brooklyn Cocktail, part 2”
Many bartenders have invented drinks called the Brooklyn Cocktail. The only version with any staying power, the Brooklyn we most often encounter today, is derived from a formula first published by Jacob Grohusko in his 1908 JACK’S MANUAL.
But we don’t encounter it very often, and therein lies a tale.
Given its name, you’d expect the Creole Cocktail to be from New Orleans. You’d be right—sort of.
There is a tongue-in-cheek reference to something called a Brainstorm Cocktail in a 1906 issue of a trade magazine called “The Northwest Druggist”:
The “brainstorm” cocktail is the latest. It consists mainly of cracked ice set aside to thaw.
Druggist humor, I guess.
The real Brainstorm Cocktail came along about ten years later; it’s one of Hugo Ensslin’s pre-Prohibition classics, first published in his Recipes for Mixed Drinks (1916).
Continue reading “Whiskey and Bar Spoons: the Brainstorm Cocktail”
I’ve always had trouble with Scotch whisky when it comes to making cocktails. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this—the long history of cocktailing has only managed to come up with a handful of Scotch-based cocktails that have any semblance of balance and finesse.
Continue reading “Cynar and Scotch: The Choke and Smoke Cocktail”
The first cocktail I learned to make was the Whiskey Sour. I made it with Scotch, which was a very poor choice, but I was just out of college and didn’t know better. It’s gratifying to discover, in retrospect, that even then I had enough wits about me to think that tinkering with the mix might lead to a worthwhile improvement in flavor. It took forever to realize that the problem was the Scotch. Well, it was too much lemon, too, but at least I finally figured it out.
Continue reading “Whiskey Sours and Embittered Last Words: the Paper Plane Cocktail”
Hangovers have been around forever, so it’s not surprising that one of the most popular branches of amateur medicine is the hangover “cure.”
Continue reading “Hair of the Dog: the Morning Glory Cocktail”
I’ve never been a follower of American horse racing, but I do enjoy the hype and pageantry of the three-race set known as the “Triple Crown” — in the US, it’s the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.
The Kentucky Derby falls near my birthday, so for decades my birthday partly has been a Derby-watching event, replete with fancy outfits, good hats and, especially, whiskey juleps. The Mint Julep is the universally accepted symbol of the Derby, and the Run for the Roses starts the ice-crushing season right.
