Blood Orange Cobbler with Lillet

Blood Orange Cobbler

Now that Summer is on us, I’m serving light wines and aperitifs more frequently. A few homemade aperitifs, such as the vin d’orange and Pamper Moose, remain tucked away, still maturing in the dark. Except, of course, when a bottle wants to be broken out. For store-bought versions, we tuck into Aperol, Pimm’s No 1, and Dubonnet. The aromatic and lightly citrusy Lillet is a particular  favorite around here; we either drink it chilled or deploy it in stiffer mixes like the Twentieth Century cocktail (see the link to Jason Wilson’s adaptation below). Lately, we’ve been using it in cobblers — something slightly boozy that we can drink in quantity without getting knock-kneed on a worknight.

Fruit cobblers, kin to slumps, grunts, and other baked desserts, are great stuff, but those are for another day. Rather, we’re getting into drinking cobblers here. David A. Embury (1948), writing in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, described them thus:

Like the Fixes and the Daisies, the Cobblers are served with straws in a goblet filled with finely crushed or shaved ice and are decorated with fruit and a sprig or two of mint. They differ from Fixes and Daisies (which are basically Sours) primarily in that the Cobblers contain either no citrus juice at all or, at the most, only one or two dashes. They consist of either a wine or a spirituous liquor combined with either sugar syrup or some sweet liqueur.

Not long ago, I spent part of a lazy afternoon at local bar Polite Provisions, where Jackie Patterson, a brand ambassador for William Grant & Sons, plunked down a bottle of the Sicilian blood orange liqueur, Solerno, for a few rounds of mixed drinks. We go through a lot of different orange liqueurs at the Whiskey Forge and have our favorites for certain drinks. In a cobbler, I particularly like the vaguely raspberry notes that Solerno brings to the game.

Blood Orange Cobbler

.75 oz. Solerno Blood Orange Liqueur
3 oz. Lillet Blanc
1 tsp blood orange marmalade* 

Dry shake ingredients and then pour over crushed ice in a julep cup or rocks glass. Garnish with a sprig of mint and sliced fruit such as strawberries and orange wheel. 

*If you don’t have blood orange marmalade, use regular Seville orange or even apricot marmalades.

Goes well with:

• Writing in the Washington Post, Jason Wilson gives his adaptation of the 1937 classic cocktail, the Twentieth Century. Most nights, I prefer a stiff whiskey or gin cocktail, but when the mercury rises, this is a nice switch.
• We also like blood orange marmalade in a sour and in a Satan's Whiskers variant we call Satan's Bloody Whiskers. 

Blood Orange Marmalade Sour

Egg whites in drinks have always skeeved me.

But this is delicious.
~ Dr. Morpheus

Broke a toe today. Maybe two. Meh. The last time I did that, I was playing volleyball. Got a splattery, smashed nose and a black eye in the same match when a buddy spiked my face instead of the ball. But we won. What's a toe compared to victory? Better it should be someone else's toe, but still...

About six years back, relatives (including a judge and a state senator who should have known something about casing the competition) challenged us Rowley kids to a water polo match. I forget whether it was a timeout they called or an outright truce, but the consensus among opposing counsel was never to have all Rowleys on one team, for what my brother-in-law once called Mrs. Rowley's debating squad snatches up gauntlets with glee.

Because blood's been on my mind, I cracked open the shaker and whipped up a cocktail using some blood orange marmalade I put up a few months back. Jamie Boudreau provided the backbone of this recipe with his own Marmalade Sour, but I like this sanguine version. My guess is that you will, too.

Don't like eggs in your drink? Whatsamatter? Chicken?

Ah, crap. Now I have to find my notes and post the marmalade recipe.

Blood Orange Marmalade Sour

3 oz cachaca (Leblon)
1 oz lemon juice
2 dashes Fee Bros orange bitters
1 egg white*
2 tablespoons of blood orange marmalade (or use grapefruit or other citrus)

Shake vigorously with ice until the egg white disappears into a soft, billowy foam that mutes the sound of the clinking ice, then strain into a cocktail glass. Quaff it cold.

I doubled the recipe, using only one egg white; it's just fine. No worries that it will be slimy or taste like a farmyard (something I like in cheese, but not necessarily booze). The white provides a smoothly velvet mouthfeel to the thing. You could even swap out some ginger preserves for a portion of the marmalade.

And if your mind works like mine, the answer is yes, Virginia: rye whiskey does stand up well to the sweetness of a marmalade sour.

*There should probably be some sort of disclaimer here that if you're elderly, or an infant, or have a compromised immune system, you should avoid raw egg whites. The truth is, that's not my bag. If you have concerns, consult your physician and read this eGullet thread, but many people I know consume raw eggs with no problems and microbiologists tell me that our fears of salmonella are wildly out of proportion to any real risk.

And if you're an infant reading up on sours, keep my number. I don't usually go for babies at parties, but you're a keeper.


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Satan's Bloody Whiskers

I've an educated taste in whisky and women,
waistcoats, and bills of fare.
Though I've had few chances to exercise it lately.
'Cause them that govern
spend all their time making up new laws
to stop men like you and me getting any.

~ Peachy Carnehan

Michael Caine made an indelible impression on me when I was a kid—not as just any character, but as ex-Army scalawag P.T. "Peachy" Carnehan in John Huston’s 1975 film The Man Who Would Be King. In their doomed scheme to become kings of remote Kafiristan during the time of the British Raj, Peachy and his compatriot Danny Dravot come across what they think are “blokes, twice as big as us” in the snow. He blurts out to Sean Connery’s Dravot “God’s holy trousers!” The phrase stuck and rattled around in my mind for decades.



It came back to me tonight. For the past few days, I’ve been hankering for a Satan’s Whiskers cocktail. The classic old gin drink has enjoyed an all-too limited renaissance lately among liquor geeks like me, in no small part to Dr. Cocktail’s take on it. It actually comes in two versions—straight and curled. No worries if you’ve never heard of it or its variants. The only difference between them is that straight calls for orange curaçao and curled calls for Grand Marnier (think of them as tricked out gins & juice).

There’s orange all over this thing; plain ol’ juice, plus orange liqueur and orange bitters. Squeeze the juice yourself and you also get orange oil expressed from the peel for a four-knuckled citrus whammy. Now, I like both versions, and fresh orange juice really does make a difference, so try it curled or straight; unless gin just skeeves you, you’re bound to like one of ‘em. But it’s the height of blood orange season in San Diego and, as I looked at a bowl of blushing little Moros on the counter, I could almost hear Peachy Carnehan’s staccato voice exclaiming “Satan’s Bloody Whiskers!”

Swapping out blood for navel or Valencia oranges gives the finished shaken cocktail a devilish crimson hue, but the ephemeral berry taste of blood orange juice comes on stronger as the drink slowly loses its chill. Moros are the variety you want, not just for their taste, but because they are often much smaller than navels and fit in a citrus squeezer nicely. Make these with regular orange juice and you've got a plain ol' Satan's Whiskers. Give it a shot either way.


Satan’s Bloody Whiskers (straight)

1 oz blood orange juice
1 oz gin
1 oz sweet vermouth
1 oz dry vermouth
4 tsp (20ml) Cointreau (just under ½ oz)*
1-2 tsp (5-10ml) orange bitters**

Shake over ice , strain into a large cocktail glass.

* for the curled version, substitute Grand Marnier.

** The Savoy Cocktail Book calls for mere dashes of bitters while Dr. Cocktail calls for a healthier dose. You could lay off the bitters some, but don't leave them out entirely. The most readily available in the US are Fee Brothers and Regan's. LeNell's keeps a great selection and may be able to hook you up with even more brands.


Goes well with

• The Man Who Would Be King
• The Savoy Cocktail Book

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