3-Ingredient Cocktails
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Ogden Nash, a singular unspooler of clever light verse, is well known for a few lines he dashed off in tribute to the Martini—the bit that begins, “There is something about a Martini, a tingle, remarkably pleasant.…” If it’s been quoted once, it’s been quoted ten thousand times. Few know, however, that this was just the first stanza of a longer poem—apparently written on commission as promotional material for the Continental Distilling Corporation—in which many mixed drinks were paid tribute, including the Old-Fashioned. As the rhyme somehow escaped me while researching The Old-Fashioned, I am including it here. We shall forgive Nash the bit about the pineapple slice.
There is something about an old-fashioned
That kindles a cardiac glow;
It is soothing and soft and impassioned
As a lyric by Swinburne or Poe.
There is something about an old-fashioned
When dusk has enveloped the sky,
And it may be the ice,
Or the pineapple slice,
But I strongly suspect it’s the rye.
Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail
This is the basic formula for an Old-Fashioned, be it 1887 or 2017. Whether you reach for mellow bourbon or spicy rye is a matter of choice; both work wonderfully in the drink. If you’re lacking a muddler (or gumption), a bar spoon of simple syrup will do the job of the sugar cube.
2 ounces bourbon or rye
2 dashes Angostura bitters
1 sugar cube
Orange twist
Saturate a sugar cube with bitters and a bar spoon of warm water at the bottom of an Old-Fashioned glass. Muddle until the sugar dissolves. Add whiskey and stir. Add one large piece of ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Twist a piece of orange zest over the drink and drop into the glass.
Trinidad Old-Fashioned
TOBY CECCHINI, 2014
It takes a little bit of searching to find the ingredients for this simple but excellent drink. You can order the cider syrup from Wood’s Cider Mill in Vermont. The other two products you can find in the better boutique liquor stores.
2 ounces Plantation Trinidad Old Reserve rum
1 scant bar spoon Wood’s Boiled Cider Syrup
2 to 3 dashes St. Elizabeth’s Allspice Dram
Lemon twist
Orange twist
Stir all the ingredients, except the lemon and orange twists, together over ice in a mixing glass and strain into a large rocks glass or Double Old-Fashioned glass filled with one large ice cube. Twist a piece of lemon zest and a piece of orange zest over the drink and drop into the glass.
Eau Claire Old-Fashioned
ROBERT SIMONSON
Ask for an Old-Fashioned in Wisconsin and you get a drink made with domestic brandy poured over the muddled pulp of sugar, an orange slice, and a maraschino cherry, and topped with soda pop (as soft drinks are still called in the state) or soda water. This drink is a refined version of the same, with cognac stepping in for the local brandy, and the fruit mimicked by the cherry bitters and orange twist—a Wisconsin Brandy Old-Fashioned in a tuxedo, if you will. If you can’t find the Ferrand, substitute an equally dry quality brand. (Bittercube is, appropriately, a Wisconsin brand, but available nationwide.) The drink is named after Eau Claire, a mid-sized city in upper Wisconsin founded by French explorers, who would have known their cognac.
2 ounces Pierre Ferrand 1840 cognac
1 bar spoon simple syrup (1:1) (this page)
3 dashes Bittercube Cherry Bark Vanilla bitters
Orange twist
Combine the syrup and bitters in an Old-Fashioned glass. Add the cognac and stir. Add one large ice cube and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Twist a piece of orange zest over the drink and drop into the glass.
Improved Cocktails
“Improved cocktails” is a phrase coined in the mid-nineteenth century that has been resurrected in recent years by drink historians. It’s a fairly vague term meaning any old-style cocktail to which an enhancement or bit of flair has been applied, be it a dash of this or that ingredient or a twist of lemon. It is used exceedingly loosely in this section to bring together drinks—both classic and modern—that go beyond the old spirit-sugar-bitters model, including a great many of the mighty vermouth-based classics that emerged from the 1880s on.
MARTINI
That cocktail silhouette that you see flashing on and off outside older bars? That’s a Martini glass. Nobody has to say it. Everyone knows. What other drink, after all, is so iconic it would get the neon treatment?
The Martini is the undisputed monarch of cocktails. Its reign has been longer than that of Queen Elizabeth II. The frosty, austere, all-alcohol icon has bewitched palates and imaginations for more than a century, to a measure no other drink can even approach. Journalist H. L. Mencken called it “the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.” Author Bernard DeVoto wrote it was “the supreme American gift to world culture.” These men said these things with a straight face.
There were other royals before it. The Mint Julep, Sherry Cobbler, Tom Collins, and more—all had their moments on the throne. But none has ruled as long as the Martini. It’s the rock and roll of cocktails; once it gripped the charts in the mid-1950s, no other form of music stood a chance. The contest was over.
The drink we all think of when we think of a Martini—still, after all this time—is the super-dry, bracingly strong, ice-cold glass of gin that became popular during the decades following World War II among the men in gray flannel suits who were simultaneously basking in America’s economic and cultural zenith and fighting off postwar blues. That particular Martini was served in triplicate at business lunches, was festooned with as many olives as you could jam on a toothpick, and enjoyed only a passing acquaintance with vermouth. It snubbed bitters outright. It was a strong drink drunk by strong personalities.
It was not always thus. And, thank heaven, it is not thus today. Mixologists, armed with out-of-print cocktail manuals they had no intention of returning to the library, brought the vermouth back to pre-Prohibition proportions and, once they could find the stuff, spiced up the mix with a few dashes of orange bitters. This brought the drink closer to its original profile and made it, strictly speaking, a true “cocktail” again (that is, a drink with bitters somewhere in the equation).
That said, this restoration was, in truth, a bit of a whitewashing of the Martini’s history, which is about as complicated as they come. For a drink with such a ramrod reputation for not messing about, the Martini was a troubled child, a real head case that took a while figuring out just what it wanted to be when it grew up. In early recipes, from the late 1800s, the ratios between gin and vermouth were all over the place. And early on, the gin in question was the sweeter Old Tom, not the juniper desert of London dry. The vermouth, meanwhile, was the sweet sort as often as it was dry. It took years before we got to what we now recognize as the Martini, the dry Martini, with no sweetness about the vermouth or the gin.
The Martini settled down and straightened its tie by the 1930s. That was around the time when men started making quasi-poetic, quasi-fascistic statements about it and began challenging each other to swizzle sticks at ten paces when they disagreed as to proportions or whatnot.
That Martini mind-set persists to this day. When someone orders a Martini in a bar, you can bet he or she has a recipe in mind. It’s like steak. People know how they want it.
Martini
Like everybody else, I have my own ideas of what makes a great Martini. Three to one suits me, proportion-wise. It hits the sweet spot between dry and wet. I like a number of gins for this recipe, depending on my mood: Beefeater if I want a more assertive drink; Plymouth if I want a more elegant one; Bombay (not Sapphire) if I want something down the middle. If you can find the higher-proof Gordon’s that is available overseas and in Duty Free shops, that makes a good, traditional drink, too. Dolin dry vermouth is a good choice for all. For a garnish, the lemon twist is the natural choice to me, as it marries w
ell with the botanical components of many London dry gins. I prefer my olives on the side in a little dish, next to the nuts.
2¼ ounces gin
¾ ounce dry vermouth
1 dash orange bitters
Lemon twist
Combine all the ingredients except the lemon twist in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Express a lemon twist over the drink and drop into the glass.
Obituary Cocktail
Basically, this is a Martini made exotic by a splash of absinthe. If this ends up being your deathbed drink, you didn’t do too badly.
2 ounces gin
¼ ounce dry vermouth
¼ ounce absinthe
Lemon twist
Combine all the ingredients except the lemon twist in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Express a lemon twist over the drink and drop into the glass.
Vesper
IAN FLEMING
Ian Fleming and his famous creation, James Bond, taught a couple of generations how to order Martinis badly, with that “shaken, not stirred” nonsense. But they also gave the world this drink, which first appeared in the 1953 novel Casino Royale.
3 ounces gin
1 ounce vodka
½ ounce Lillet Blanc
Lemon twist
Combine all the ingredients except the lemon twist in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Express a lemon twist over the drink and drop into the glass.
Japanese Cocktail
One of the oldest and most perfect of three-ingredient cocktails, and a drink widely respected among bartenders, the Japanese Cocktail first saw print in 1862 but remains stubbornly unknown and underappreciated. Perhaps it is too intimidating to be truly beloved. The combination of strong brandy and thick, rich orgeat can knock you on your heels at first sip if you’re unfamiliar with it—hell, even if you are familiar with it. It is the ultimate nightcap. It is also a rare cocktail that was actually invented by that paragon of mid-nineteenth-century mixology, Jerry Thomas. If this drink alone had been his legacy, it would be enough for us to honor his name.
2 ounces cognac
½ ounce orgeat
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Lemon twist
Combine all the ingredients except the lemon twist in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Express a lemon twist over the drink and drop into the glass.
Hanky Panky
ADA CALHOUN
One of the best drinks to come out of the legendary American Bar in London’s Savoy Hotel is a fine early use of Fernet Branca. The two dashes go a long way.
1½ ounces gin
1½ ounces sweet vermouth
2 dashes Fernet Branca
Orange peel
Combine all the ingredients except the orange peel in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Express an orange twist over the drink and drop into the glass.
Alaska
This is one of the oldest and best cocktail applications of yellow Chartreuse. I here advocate an early recipe that calls for Old Tom gin found in Jacques Straub’s 1914 work Drinks. I find it results in a wonderfully elegant and mellow drink. More commonly, recipes for the Alaska call for London dry gin, which also works well enough.
2 ounces Old Tom gin
1 ounce yellow Chartreuse
2 dashes orange bitters
Combine all the ingredients in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe.
Kangaroo
Martini purists would have been saved so much aggravation over the last half-century if lovers of vodka Martinis had just stuck to one of the drink’s original names, Kangaroo, rather than co-opt the hallowed Martini name. Recipes for the Kangaroo omit bitters, which were more common to the recipes named “Vodka Martini.” But I’d rather promulgate this name so we can all live in peace.
2¼ ounces vodka
¾ ounce dry vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters
Lemon twist
Combine all the ingredients except the lemon twist in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Express a lemon twist over the drink and drop into the glass.
GIBSON
In the annals of mixed drinks, the Gibson is a kind of spectral presence. Though more than a century old, and enshrined in classic films like North by Northwest and All About Eve (always a good way to enter the cocktail canon), the drink still ranks as an also-ran, shivering in the massive shadow cast by its larger-than-life cousin, the mighty Martini.
Bartenders sense the drink’s self-esteem issues and aren’t always sure how to address them. If you ever want to cast mixologists into a quandary, ask them whether they consider the Gibson a cocktail in its own right or merely a Martini with an onion. They will pause, looking thoughtful, even troubled, for a fleeting moment, before carefully delivering their answer. No two replies will be the same.
Essentially, a Gibson is a mixture of London dry gin and dry vermouth, with a pickled cocktail onion serving as the garnish. Part of the reason why the Gibson was, for a while, such a laggard in the cocktail revival may be that garnish. Mixology mavens have routinely made their own cherries and bitters for some time now. The cocktail onion, however, doesn’t seem to have been worth the trouble. Even today, when you order a Gibson at many respected drinking dens, the bartender will often fish two or three flavorless white orbs from a slim jar bought at D’Agostino. This is wrong. Tiny, store-bought onions bring no more to the drink, flavorwise, than the toothpick that binds them together. If the onion is what makes a Gibson a Gibson, it ought to be fussed over and perfected.
Lately, though, the long-suffering drink has been getting some much-needed love. A handful of prominent cocktail bars in New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere are doing the Gibson up proud. The new breed of Gibson standard-bearers all pickle their own plus-size alliums, each with a very personal twist. The big boys now on parade subtly perfume the gin and vermouth. They contribute. They also make for a great finale, a savory snack at drink’s end that’s equally as good as the liquid that precedes it.
Ryan Fitzgerald, an owner at the bar ABV in San Francisco, which serves a superlative Gibson, thinks the drink may be its own side dish. “It’s so nice to have a bite of that pickled onion, then sip some more, then have another bite,” he said. “The Gibson’s almost more a food pairing than it is a Martini.”
By the standards invoked in this book, the Gibson is technically a two-ingredient drink, as it historically doesn’t call for bitters, and we are not counting garnishes in our ingredient tally. But, happily, some of the nouveau Gibsons being served today add sweeter blanc vermouth to the mix (instead of, or in addition to, straight dry vermouth), as well as a bit of onion brine. This nudges the drink into three-ingredient territory.
The recipe featured here belongs to Meaghan Dorman of Dear Irving, which may serve the best Gibson in New York City. Dorman uses only Carpano Bianco vermouth—no dry vermouth at all—making for a much sweeter, smoother Gibson, along with some brine. It’s an unusual take, but a harmonious one.
As to the drink’s identity crisis, the deciding factor, according to Dorman, may not be the onion at all, but the drink’s tenacious nomenclature. The name “Gibson” was first applied to a gin-vermouth mixture in the late 1890s in San Francisco. If the drink were such a weak pretender to the Martini throne, the title Gibson should have died out decades ago. But it hasn’t.
That seals the deal as far as Dorman is concerned. “People don’t give you the option of ’Martini with twist, olive, or onion,’ ” she said. “It’s always, ’twist or olive?’ That makes the Gibson a separate thing.”
Meaghan Dorman’s Gibson
Dorman’s version of the Gibson has become the signature drink of her Gramercy Park bar, Dear Irving. The recipe she uses for cocktail onions comes from Todd Thrasher, the king of cocktails down in Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia.
2 ounces Tanqueray 10
1 ounce Carpano Bianco vermouth
¼ ounce onion brine (this page)
Cocktail onion (this page)
Combine all the ingredients except the cocktail onion in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir until chilled, about 30 seconds. Strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with the cocktail onion.
Cocktail Onions
MAKES 15–20 ONIONS
This recipe for homemade cocktail onions is a lot simpler than it first looks. Invest the time. It’s worth it. “Pickling spice” can be found in most supermarkets among the other spices.
4 cups distilled champagne vinegar
3 cups warm filtered water
2 cups white sugar
2 tablespoons kosher salt