1950 Paraty Cocktail: An Old Style Dry Shake for an Old Style Cachaça

In 1723, Jacques Savary des Bruslons informed readers of his Dictionnaire universel du commerce that native Brazilians — before Europeans came on the scene — were the most robust of all men, seven feet tall, and at the age of 100, they were no more decrepit than Europeans aged merely 60 years. However, he noted, ils ne vivaient que de maïs, d’oranges et de sucre — they lived on maize, oranges, and sugar. French merchants made fortunes on that Brazilian sugar and, in the process, some developed a taste for a Brazilian cane spirit called paraty (par-a-CHEE).

Over 225 years later, the 9th edition of Henri Babinski Gastronomie Pratique (1950), gives a recipe for a paraty cocktail "particularly appreciated in Brazil," but which is too strong, presumably, for more refined French palates. Paraty we would recognize today as cachaça and the technique he recommended for taming it as a variation on the dry shake so popular in recent years.

The dry shake, as practiced today, is a straightforward technique used to emulsify egg whites in drinks. Some think it’s new; it’s not. First, some portion (and sometimes all) of the cocktail’s ingredients is put in a shaker with the egg white. Then the bartender seals the shaker, shakes hard to emulsify, then re-shakes with ice, and pours the drink in a glass. It may or may not be strained into the glass, depending on the drink — and the bartender. The result is a velvet-textured drink with a foamy head made of very fine bubbles.

The technique Babinski (or Ali Bab, as he was known) recommends is different. Paraty — named for a colonial-era town of the same name in the state of Rio de Janeiro — was rough stuff for drinkers used to fine French brandies (though God knows some calvados could strip the paint off a barn door). It had what Ali Bab referred to as l’odeur empyreumatique, a “burned” smell, possibly from using direct-fire stills.

As anyone who has ever truffled eggs in the shell, refined homemade wines, or cleared soup stock or boiled coffee knows, egg whites can be used to absorb odor and trap particulates in liquids for easy removal. This is the same idea. Mixing egg white with the “burned” spirit, then straining the mix before using it in a cocktail, helped to remove some of the objectionable odor — which, seemingly, native Brazilians did not mind, even those who lived to a hundred years and stood seven feet tall.

Once softened and strained, the spirit was approachable for goût francais and could be blended with lemon juice, pineapple syrup, and bitters.

Cachaça imported today in the United States and western Europe generally does not need such taming. Leblon, for instance, works just fine without the strained egg white treatment. Some of today’s moonshine, though, could benefit from a bit of last-minute polishing…

From Ali Bab’s 1950 Gastronomie Pratique:

Paraty Cocktail

20 grams of paraty,
10 grams of lemon juice,
10 grams of syrup of pineapple,
5 drops of Angostura bitters,
1 egg white,
Crushed ice,
Zest of one lemon. 

Mix the paraty and egg white in a glass, which has the effect of mitigating some of the paraty’s burned aroma: shake it all for a few minutes, then strain. 

Put the strained paraty in a shaker with lemon juice, pineapple syrup, angostura bitters, crushed ice, shake to chill; pour into a cocktail glass, squeeze the lemon zest over the drink and serve with small straws.

And the original for those whose French is better than mine:

Cocktail au paraty 

Le cocktail au paraty est particulièrement apprécié au Bresil. Sa composition intégrale nous semblerait trope forte. En voici une adaptation au goût francais. 

Pour chaque personne, prenez:
20 grammes de paraty,
10 grammes de jus de citron,
10 grammes de sirop d’ananas,
5 gouttes de bitter angostura,
1 blanc d’oeuf,
Glace pilee,
Zeste d’un citron. 

Reunissez dans un verre le paraty et le blanc d’oeuf, qui a pour effet de mitiger un peu l’odeur empyreumatique du paraty: agitez le tout pendant quelques minutes; filtrez. 

Mette dans un shaker le paraty filtré, le jus de citron, le sirop d’ananas, le bitter angostura, de la glace pilée; secouez pour glacer; passes dans un verre à cocktail, ajoutez le jus du zeste d’un citron et servez avec des petites pailles.

Hulabilly Lemonade: The Fireflies Won't Be the Only Ones Getting Pleasantly Lit

Tiki Oasis is in full swing again. Regular readers know that for several years now, I've made a point of attending the four-day extravaganza of rum, beehive hairdos, Bettie Page lookalikes, surf tones, and tiki madness in San Diego. This year the theme is Hulabilly. Otto von Stroheim, the founder of TikiO, invited me to give a talk. So yesterday afternoon, we filled a ballroom, threw up some slides, hit the sauce, and delved into my field: illicit liquor. 

Over the next few weeks, I'll add some more stories from that talk, but I had so many requests for my boozy lemonade recipe yesterday that I realized I should put it up while the hulabilly hodown was in full swing.

Johnny Jeffery flew in from Wisconsin to join me for the talk since he was the distiller for one of the whiskeys we were tasting: Death's Door white whiskey. Jeffery is in the privileged position of sampling his white white right off the still. His recommendation for the rest of us who can't get it at quite such high proof? Try it in a margarita.

The Hulabilly Lemonade I made as a welcome drink for the crowd is a twist on an old-fashioned front porch lemonade…with two differences. The first is that I used two sugar syrups — one demerara and the other caramelized, which isn’t as sweet, but gives the drink a soft, almost praline note that complements the fresh lemon juice. The second is that I asked the volunteers helping out with the talk to pour in a whole bunch of whiskey.

Without the whiskey, the lemonade makes a good Arnold Palmer when mixed 1:1 with black iced tea. With whiskey, though, and cooling off on the porch some hot evening with a pitcher of this Hulabilly Lemonade and a few glasses…well, let’s just say that the fireflies won’t be the only one getting pleasantly lit.

Hulabilly Lemonade 

1.5 oz Death's Door White Whiskey
4 oz front porch lemonade (see below)
2 teaspoons caramel syrup (optional, see below) 

Mix whiskey, lemonade, and caramel syrup over ice. Garnish with mint if you're feeling extra fancy.

Front Porch Lemonade 5 parts lemon juice
5 parts water
3 parts Demerara simple syrup 

Stir until blended in a jar, pitcher, or gallon jug. 

A note on the caramel syrup: In my opinion, the caramel syrup really makes this shine, but it's not strictly necessary — you could leave it out entirely. It not just tastes good, though; it's a nod to old-school bootleggers who sometimes faked age in illicit spirits with caramel (a practice that hasn't died out). Author David Lebovitz has good notes on making caramel; if you've never made it, check them out before you begin. The way I make this cocktail syrup, it's a simple ratio: two parts sugar to one part water so that the final version — by volume — is 25% more than the original sugar volume. First, measure whatever quantity of plain white table sugar (12 ounces by volume is a handy amount for home use). Then measure half that of water (6 ounces in this example). Have it at the ready.

Slowly caramelize the dry sugar in a deep, heavy-bottomed pan (I use an unlined copper pot, but use what you've got). When it reaches a rich amber color, immediately (and carefully) pour in all the water. Be careful: it will spatter and steam. The whole mass will seize up in a hard candied blob. No worries. Turn the heat to low, stirring now and then, until the sugar dissolves. Some water will have evaporated as steam, so when the whole thing is liquid and cool, put it in a measuring cup and add just enough water to make the total volume 25% more than the original volume of sugar. In this example, 12 ounces (100%) plus 3 ounces (25%) = 15 ounces. Just top off with cool water until the total volume is 15 ounces. Easy peasy.

Goes well with:

• The Tiki Oasis site.
• Death's Door spirits are distributed in 40 US states, including California. Check out their website.
• Martin Cate (almost) Blows the Lid off Tiki Oasis, a piece about San Francisco barman Martin Cate, his talk on the history of punch, and a recipe for his Tiki Oasis 10th Anniversary Punch.
• The Hyperreality of King Kukulele, an affectionate look at the slippery notion of authenticity when talking about tiki.

Applejack in the Church Lemonade

There are few compounds that are more sinful than the applejack of New Jersey. The name has a homely, innocent appearance, but in reality applejack is a particularly powerful and evil spirit. The man who intoxicates himself on bad whisky is sometimes moved to kill his wife and set his house on fire, but the victim of applejack is capable of blowing up a whole town with dynamite and of reciting original poetry to every surviving inhabitant.

~ "A Wicked Beverage” New York Times, April 10, 1894

We like apple brandies around here. In fact, ten or twelve bottles from various American and French producers are in rotation now and won't last long. We'll put them in cocktails, in cider, punch, toddies, and straight up in glasses. In particular, we like the American style apple brandy known as applejack. It is at times — especially when new-born — as clear as water. That has its place, but when it's been put down on oak for several years, it transforms into a brown spirit that Americans have used as they might whiskey for hundreds of years.

While prowling through old papers recently, I came across strong praise for the stuff coming from — of all places — Salt Lake City. Seems a report of applejack getting into the lemonade at a church function in New Jersey made it all the way to Utah. The unnamed author writes: "Applejack never caused a lewd feeling to enter the heart of anyone. Applejack is not that sort of liquor. Good applejack carries with it the smell of the blossoms in the orchard. When one gets intoxicated on applejack he or she doesn’t want to kick at all; they want to lie down and sleep and dream of green fields and running brooks and little birds and wildflowers."

Perhaps a different sort of applejack was circulating in Salt Lake City in those days; I, for one, can testify that the stuff has spurred lewd feelings more than once. From the August 26th, 1905 issue of Truth, here's the rest:

From the editorial columns of the Ogden State Journal article for the following which was evidently pilfered by the excellent newspaper; but which is worth printing just the same. ”At a church festival recently held in the town of Annandale, N.J., one of the provisions for refreshing the inner man and in parking a cheery yet seemingly air of conviviality as an esteemed eastern exchange puts it, was a large jar or can of lemonade, of which the young men present partook freely. Thereby hangs the tale of religious Annandale’s present great disturbance and perplexity.

”Lemonade is one of the mildest of beverages and at that commonly encountered the church festivals and similar gatherings is, as a rule, rather milder than the average decoction. But this Annandale brew, for reasons yet undiscovered, reversed all rules and precedents. For proportionately with in the lowering of the bowl a strange air of liberty and abandon, noticeable in some of the young people early in the proceedings gradually developed into a mistakable symptoms of the finest joy and exhilaration, which reached a climax when a number of young women previously noted for prudent behavior, did a skirt dance with high kicking on the church lawn, to the Internet scandal of the deacons and the glee of ribald onlookers in the street, who applauded the dancers and incited them to wild feats of agility.

”Subsequent analysis of the lemonade disclosed the presence of a large infusion of applejack, one of the most powerful exhilarants known to science – as the Rev. Sam Small, who was once floored by it while on a temperance tour in Vermont, can testify. The great question now is, who doctored the lemonade and an investigating committee of elders is on a still hunt of discovery. It seems a little odd that the taste of the applejack was not detected before the stuff got in its deadly work on the congregation. This is not the least mysterious feature of the affair, and suggests that, in the absence of a positive clue, the old theological explanation of a trap set by the evil one might be resorted to. Satan was frequently caught at just such pranks in the good old times when there was a more vivid realization of his personality and in these days of doubt and rationalism, so-called.”

I rush to the defense of applejack. It wasn't applejack that was mixed with that lemonade; it was something else. Applejack never made a “prudent woman” behave like that. There is nothing in applejack to cause a demure young lady to wish to point one foot at high noon while the other stands at six o’clock. That lemonade was doctored with champagne. Applejack never caused a lewd feeling to enter the heart of anyone. Applejack is not that sort of liquor. Good applejack carries with it the smell of the blossoms in the orchard. When one gets intoxicated on applejack he or she doesn’t want to kick at all; they want to lie down and sleep and dream of green fields and running brooks and little birds and wildflowers. The whole atmosphere is perfumed with the scent of the honeysuckle and the Sweet Williams. The sky is blue, and minus a cloud. The hills take on a purple haze and the sun moves across the heavens surrounded by a halo of crimson and gold. The waters of the creek sing a love song and the chant of the feathered songster in the tree is an echo of the harmony from on high. The soul is at peace and never runs riot as did these previously well behaved females at the church fair. No sir, that lemonade was never doctored with applejack. It was mixed with the vintage of France, that puts fire in one’s veins and makes one think he is born to dance and raise the devil generally. Applejack is not guilty.

Goes well with:

• Applejacked Hessians and the Jack Rose, a tale of revolutionary-era mercenaries being overtaken by the hospitality of a host who provided them with the local spirit — with commentary from Will Elsbury, a military specialist librarian at the Library of Congress.
• American Apple Spirits, my overview of historic and current offerings of apple spirits — from brandy to absinthe — from American distillers.
• Speaking of lemonade: here's my recipe for our house lemonade (with a ginger-spiked variant). There's also pink lemonade (empinkened with bitters) and "circus" lemonade, the Honorable William T. (Cocktail) Boothby's 1908 jab at the charlatans offering nearly lemonless lemonade at circuses, fairs, and churches.

The Price of (Citrus) Perfection

Georgia O'Keeffe lemons show up with surprising frequency

In a major grocery store, whether it's Safeway, Ralph's, Tesco, or Albert Heijn, you're apt to find beautiful fruit on offer. Oranges so immaculate and perfectly spherical they could be ornaments. Eureka and Lisbon lemons so hefty, so perfect, that they each could stand as the very definition of "lemon." Down the line: perfect fruits and vegetables. Well, perfect to the eye, anyway. Relatively high prices reflect  culling of the oddballs, the defects, the grotesque, the undersized, and the unevenly ripened. Limes for 69¢ each, individual lemons for 89¢.

In a pinch, sure, I'll buy just enough at those prices to eek through whatever citrus shortage drove me to that particular store. But at the rate we burn through fruit — especially citrus for cocktails — I'd be a damn fool paying retail prices for perfectly formed specimens.

Enter the second-tier grocer. You may not know about them in your community, but even many small towns (and I've lived in a few) have markets that serve immigrant communities. I'm not talking about high-end specialty stores that cater to well-heeled world travelers (though those are nice, too). Rather I mean the small stores with ingredients imported from "back home"or made locally in a familiar style that less affluent shoppers nonetheless crave; curry blends, certain cheeses, particular breads, teas, syrups, sugars, sweets, pickles, etc. In Philadelphia, there's the 9th Street Italian market. In San Diego, my go-to place for such things is North Park Produce. The store clearly buys a lot of seconds — those fruit and vegetables that aren't quite up to snuff for display at the major chains, the ones that were culled. These are the fruits I tend to buy for cocktail and cooking.

Limes with a bit of wind blemish, oranges with a blush of green on one side, and lemons that can be, frankly, bizarre are what I'm after. Most of them are actually fine, just undersized. And the prices? Well, they fluctuate, but a single dollar will typically get me 4-5 pounds of oranges (pounds, mind you, not single oranges), 7-10 lemons, or anywhere from 8 to 20 limes. At those prices, we're almost never without the ingredients to crank out any one of hundreds of cocktails.

Of course, if drinkers or eaters will see the fruit as part of serving or prearing it, more seemly specimens may be in order. A big bowl of defects and seconds on the bar is not going to get you top dollar for your cocktails. But a hybrid approach is fine. Serving fresh lemonade from a huge see-though dispenser? Juice the cheap ones, but buy a bag of big perfect beauties to cut in half, ream, and float in the mix.

Customers, after all, do pay a premium for pretty food.

Goes well with:

• Bitter oranges. The season is drawing to a close, but I scored a bunch at North Park Produce (3551 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego, CA) for $1.39/lb and used most of the batch for making vin d'orange. The rest is going into a cake later today.

Making Vin d'Orange with the Last of the Seville Oranges

Now that winter has hit full stride, the citrus offerings could hardly be better. We’ve been making marmalades, lemon curds, desserts, and cocktails with the aromatic bounty. In the kitchen now, I’ve got 5 kilos of navel oranges, a box of Meyer lemons, a bowl of blood oranges, several dozens each of limes and Eureka lemons, a bowl of bergamots — and three Seville oranges.

Those last three bitter oranges may end up as the base for ice cream or a cake. Maybe syrup. Perhaps a tincture. Not entirely sure. I’ll have it figured out by dinner. The rest of them are soaking in wine.

Unlike relatively sweet Washington or Valencia oranges typical of American supermarkets, the rough-skinned Seville oranges are an older bitter/sour variety with limited availability in the US. Centuries ago, when members of the English and French aristocracies grew trees in their glass-enclosed orangeries, these were the fruits they grew. In Florida today, grocery stores and fruit stands may sell them as sour oranges or naranjas agrias — a core component of Cuban mojo, a ubiquitous (and delicious) marinade. In Spain, most of the bitter orange crop is exported to the UK where it is turned to classic orange marmalade. The dried peels of Caribbean harvests remain the building blocks of numerous famous orange liqueurs.

Lumpy-ass bitter oranges, freshly washed

But it is France, where bitter oranges are known as bigarades, that inspired me this weekend to convert a batch into a simple orange-infused aperitif called vin d’orange. The instructions below may seem proscriptive, but in truth, it’s a flexible recipe with room for adjustments. Do you prefer a drier result? Use less sugar and a drier wine. Like something more full-bodied? Try it with red wine rather than the rosé I used. If white wine is your thing, who’s to stop you from using white? Precedents exist for each. You could even ditch the bitter oranges entirely and make vin de pamplemousse with grapefruit.

By early summer, the wine will have taken on the ethereal taste of vanilla and bitter orange. Balanced with the sweetness of cane sugar, it will be just the thing for our pre-meal drinks outdoors. And, of course, if you want to play with it as an alternate to sweet vermouth or Lillet, you’d be on solid ground.

Vin d’Orange

8-10 Seville oranges (about 1 kilo or 2-2.5lbs) quartered lengthwise and sliced in smallish chunks — peel, pith, seeds, and all
2 entire lemons, sliced similarly
6 (750ml each for a total of 4.5 liters) bottles of cheap but decent rosé wine (see below)
1 liter vodka 80 proof/40% abv
2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise and cut into thirds
700g-1 kilo sugar (1.5-2.2 lbs)

If you have a container large enough to hold 2 gallons, put everything in it. If, like me, you use two smaller jugs, split the ingredients evenly between them.

I'll get to you when I return from Kentucky.

Put all the ingredients into one (or two) jars. Seal, shake. The sugar won't all dissolve at first. Patience; it will over time. Put the jars in a dark spot such as a cabinet, closet, or basement. Give it a shake or two every day for two weeks. Just to show it who's boss. Then every week or so do the same. So it doesn't forget.

After a rest of 30-60 days (I find better extraction at 60 days, but even an hour shows marked improvement on taste and some impatient souls simply can't wait two months), strain the mixture into a large clean bucket, carboy, fermentation tub or what have you. Cover it and let it settle a day, then line a funnel with several layers of cheesecloth and rack the heady wine into the clean bottles you saved, leaving any sediment behind in the bucket.

Done. Label it, date it, store it in a cool, dark place. One bottle should go into that cool, dark place known as the fridge.

Equipment note: You’ll need one or two large glass jars or stainless steel containers for the long infusion. Make sure they are airtight. I used 5-liter glass jugs with swing tops and gasket closures. When the time comes to bottle, you’ll also need clean glass wine bottles. My suggestion: wash and save the ones you emptied into the jugs.

Goes well with:

• The wine I used here was a 2010 Côtes du Rhône, Cuvée Abel Clément, about $5/750ml at the San Diego Wine Company. Use a wine you like and that doesn't break the bank. 
• We really do put citrus though the paces here. Try a blood orange marmalade sour with a dose of Brazilian cane spirits.
• My take on a solid preserves recipe book, The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook. It's especially useful for inspiration of what to do with the more unusual fruits cropping up in farmers' markets over the last few years. 
• A few notes on The River Cottage Preserves Book, including a recipe for an unusual homemade noyau (though not, it should be noted, my recipe for noyau).
• We like jam a lot around here. Try the hot pepper version and straight up bacon jam with apple cider.

Max's (Other) Mistake — A Tropical Drink With a Genever Twist

Genever is  — or used to be — a hard sell at the Whiskey Forge where the usual hangers-on prefer American whiskeys and rum. Nothing wrong with those two, but this knee-jerk mistrust of genever bothers me because the stuff is delicious and I'm a bit bummed to the be only one who regularly reaches for it. Genever (or jenever) is a grain spirit from the Netherlands and Belgium. A few varieties are available, some even flavored with citrus, but they all are flavored with juniper, those little blue-black cannonball berries that give gin its characteristic taste. Knowing their weakness for rum I found last night a way to sneak genever into my drinking buddies' cocktails; use it in a tiki drink that calls for gin.

The result? They used almost an entire bottle of Bols genever on multiple rounds of a drink that San Francisco barman Martin Cate dubbed Max's Mistake. I admit the response to the stuff was a little more enthusiastic than I'd hoped.

The original drink uses gin, but an elision to the Dutch stuff was a natural, and tasty, move. Here's Cate explaining the drink and how its name came about on his new cocktail series for CHOW (recipe after the video):

Max's Mistake  

Martin Cate 

Smuggler's Cove, San Francisco 

1 cup of crushed ice
2 dashes of bitters
1 oz passion fruit syrup
1 oz lemon juice
0.5 oz honey syrup (a mix of equal parts honey and water)
2 oz gin [Bols genever]
2 oz sparkling lemonade

Blend 2-3 second and serve topped with ice cubes and fresh mint.

Goes well with:

• Regular readers will recognize Cate as the mad genius behind the koi pond-sized flaming tiki punch at Tiki Oasis (pictures and scaled-down recipe here).
• Bitterballen, little fried croquettes quite similar to Cajun boudin balls, are classic Dutch bar food, perfect for a few shots of genever, even if it is all doctored up with fruit syrups and juices. Here's my recipe. 
• Americans used to have a great thirst for genever, also called Holland gin or, simply, Hollands. Here's Samuel M'Harry's 1809 recipe for making a semblance of the imported article from very local American ingredients. 
• Drinkupny.com has both Bols genever and the barrel-aged version on sale now. This is a good deal, but shop around; liquor regularly goes on steep discount during the 4th quarter and you may be able to find even bigger discounts. 
• Have you a glut of genever? Then consider whipping up a batch of kruidnoten liqueur, a Dutch recipe combining the spirit with...cookies. Those without so much to spare can swap vodka. 

Truffled Rum and (Fine) Champagne Punch

[Edit later that same morning: see Said's answer (a painfully obvious one) to my question in the comments section below. In this case, "fine" Champagne is not sparkling wine, but brandy.] 

At nearly 1,300 pages and weighing over six pounds, my copy of Ali-Bab’s Gastronomie Pratique is a beast. Despite the author’s name, it is not a Persian text; it’s French. Ali-Bab was the pseudonym of Henri Babinski (1855-1931), a French mining engineer who was an amateur avid cook as well. His culinary encyclopedia was first published in 1907 with a modest 314 pages, but was expanded over subsequent editions. My beastly edition is the 9th from 1981. Sometime between the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, a recipe for truffled rum and Champagne punch — punch truffé — slipped in.

The recipe is problematic and I’m giving it here partly as a curiosity. I use truffles when they are in season, but I’m not as lavish in my use of them as Babinski seems to have been. More to the point, I think the recipe is promising but doesn’t work as written; in particular, the order of adding rum and Champagne seems inverted. My French is self-taught and I’d like someone else to take a run at a translation.

The problem, as I see it, is that a mix of sugar, sparkling wine, and nutmeg won't catch fire. BUT — as anyone who's been around my house for Thanksgiving can attest — a mix of rum, sugar, and nutmeg will, when warmed, catch alight. I think the way to fix this is simply that: change the position of rum and Champagne, then proceed as directed.

Or am I missing something? Here’s the original followed by my translation. Anyone — francophiles, French bartenders, punch enthusiasts — want to have a go at it? [See comments section]

Punch truffé (Babinski)

Pour six à huit personnes, prenez:  

350 grammes de fine champagne,
350 grammes de vieux rhum,
250 grammes de sucre,
120 grammes de vin de Malaga,
1 belle trufle noire du Périgord,
1 citron,
¼ noix muscade. 

Mettez dans un bol à punch la fine champagne, la muscade et le sucre, faites flamber, mélangez bien. Lorsque le sucre sera dissous, ajoutez le rhum et le jus du citron ; activez la flamme. En meme temps, faites cuire la truffe dans le malaga, retirez-la, puis ajoutez le malaga au melange rhum et fine champagne.

Coupez la truffe en tranches minces, metiez une tranche dans chaque verre de punch et servez chaud.

 And mine:

Truffled Punch (Rowley)

For six to eight people, take:

350 grams of fine champagne,
350 grams of old rum,
250 grams of sugar, 120 grams of Malaga wine,
One beautiful black Périgord truffle,
1 lemon,
¼ nutmeg.

Put the fine champagne [see comments section], nutmeg, and sugar in a punch bowl, set alight, mix well. When the sugar has dissolved, add the rum and lemon juice; activate the flame. At the same time, cook the truffle in Malaga, remove it, then add the rum mixture to the Malaga and champagne.

Cut the truffle into thin slices, put a slice in each glass punch, and serve hot.

Goes well with: 

• More about Babinski and his book. An English version of Gastronomie Pratique was printed in 1974 as The Encyclopedia of Practical Gastronomy. Peter Herzmann has several copies of this book, but doesn’t care for that one.
• Another Henri — this one Henri Charpentier — gave a recipe for Eggs, William S. Burroughs in his privately published 1945 Food and Finesse: The Bride's Bible. Here's the recipe.
• Speaking of flames and punch, San Francisco barman Martin Cate made a hell of a show at Tiki Oasis a few years back with fire and rum. The tale of the punch so big it had to be made in a koi pond is here. 

Nearly a Liter of Lemon Drops

While I take great pleasure in some agressive and obscure cocktails with the occasional outré ingredient, not all of my friends do. In fact, most of them don't give a damn about absinthe, moonshine, homemade bitters, or the latest alpine liqueur. For them, a Jack & Coke, a SoCo on ice, or just a splash of bourbon is fine.

Sure, I'd like it if people — especially people I care about — developed more sophisticated tastes in mixed drinks, but more importantly, I want friends to enjoy themselves at my house. I want each of them to have a drink he or she wants and likes. Foisting baroque cocktails on them with ingredients they're not going to be able to find on the liquor store shelf (and which they don't really want) just isn't being a good host.

One group of friends in particular likes lemon drops. Likes? Strike that. These guys will destroy shot after shot of the sweet-tart vodka drink. So for them, I keep a liter bottle pre-batched in the freezer. Hey, it's cheaper than good whiskey and faster than making cocktails à la minute. More importantly, the guys love it. It's not a sure thing that it will be there, but three times out of five, if you pop open our freezer door, a frosted bottle of slushy yellow liqueur sits on the bottom shelf, ready to be doled out in shotglasses. Not quite as thick or sweet as homemade limoncello, but the same general idea.

Nearly a Liter of Lemon Drops

18 oz/530ml lemon/citrus flavored vodka
9 oz /270ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
4 oz/120ml simple syrup (I use 2:1) 

Shake, strain, into a one-liter bottle, and store in the freezer. Serve in shot glasses, sugar-rimmed or not, according to your taste. 

Right out of the freezer, the mixture will contain lots of ice shards which quickly melt. It's up to you whether to take this one slushy or wait a few moments and down it once it smoothes out. In The Jox of Mixology (Clarkson Potter, 2003), Gaz Regan suggests swapping triple sec for the syrup for "more depth and character." I myself have been known to spike the liter of lemon drops with a teaspoon (5ml) of Angostura bitters which, to my mind, have an affinity for lemon.

Goes well with: 

• Victoria Moore's 2009 book How to Drink. In it, she writes a number of sensible things. One in particular seems apropos: “It’s often said that life’s too short to drink bad wine, but I’d go further. Life’s also too short to drink good wine, or anything else for that matter, if it’s not what you feel like at the time. There’s no point in popping the cork on a bottle of vintage champagne if you really hanker after a squat tumbler of rough red wine.” 

Two Lemonades: Fresh or with a Soulless Ginger Twist

Summer has come on cruelly for parts of the United States. Since last week, temperature spikes in the Midwest and East Coast have made me worried for family...and relieved that San Diego remains, as ever, lovely.

I will be traveling to those hot and humid places over the next few weeks, though, and undoubtedly will keep cool with beer, whiskey, iced tea...and lemonade.

I don't bother with pre-made lemonade, the powders and mixes. I'm not all snooty and think they're too sweet or otherwise unhealthy — it's just that fresh lemonade is easy to make from three ingredients we always have on hand; lemon juice, water, and sugar syrup. Why fake it when doing it properly takes so little effort?

This is an extremely versatile basic recipe. The ratio of ingredients is a straightforward 5:5:3, so use cups, milliliters, coffee mugs, etc. Any volume will work as long as you maintain the ratio. Scale up or down as your thirst, crowd, and container size dictate.

Fresh Lemonade

17oz/500ml fresh lemon juice
17oz/500ml cool water
10oz/300ml 2:1 sugar syrup

Mix in a pitcher. Chill if you've got time. Pour into glasses over fresh ice.

Monday, I was faced with a pot of ginger-infused water. It was leftover from Sunday night's ginger tea. Rather than throw it out, I swapped it out for the water I would otherwise use in the above recipe and made ginger syrup with the rest.

I strained the ginger water and set aside 250ml. About about 350ml remained, so I added twice the volume of sugar (700ml) and heated the mix in a pot just enough to dissolve the sugar. With everything in place, it was simple to make a batch of

Soulless Ginger Lemonade

Soulless? Does it lack the pungency and bite we expect from fresh ginger? No, that's there. It's even more refreshing than the plain version. Soulless because, as even we gingers know, we have no souls.

8oz/250ml fresh lemon juice
8oz/250ml  cool ginger-infused water
5oz/150ml 2:1 ginger syrup

Mix in a pitcher. Chill if you've got time. Pour into glasses over fresh ice.

Of course, if you have ginger syrup on hand already, this is a snap to make. Just use that and plain cool water. Doctor this any way you see fit; blend it with blackberries, spike it with mint or basil, but don't forget the ameliorative effect a stiff dose of bourbon could have on a glass of ginger lemonade. Carbonate the stuff, add a dash of bitters with the bourbon and you've got something pretty close to a Kentucky Mule.


Goes well with:

• Empinken your drinkin' with pink lemonade — a look at its history and notes on execution (hint: use cocktail bitters).

Why So Spunky, Punky Monkey?

We get into cyclical ruts around the Whiskey Forge — watching a month’s worth of Tosh.0 in one sitting, for instance, reading everything a particular author published, or tucking into the glazed pork belly time and time again from our favorite neighborhood joint, Carnitas’ Snack Shack.

And drinks? Ah, man. There, too. We make a drink we like and that’s it. That’s what we drink. We got so stuck on Kentucky mules last year that I can barely stomach the thought of one more. Gallons, literally, of Buffalo Trace bourbon went down our throats on that one cocktail. Anyone who came over was offered a bourbon-and-ginger-beer combo. That’s not to say I’m sick of bourbon, that I grew weary of the bitters in it, or that the mule is a bad drink. Far from it. I just wanted a break from the monotony of it.

Enter the Punky Monkey, created by Joaquin Simo of New York’s Death & Company, to shake me out of our cocktail doldrums. Jeff Berry laid out the drink in his Beachbum Berry Remixed. At the bar, Berry reports that it’s on the menu as the Kerala. Regardless of the name, it’s a great little cocktail that relies on not just bourbon, but — in an uncommon and, in some quarters, controversial move — bourbon and rum in the same glass.

The rum is The Scarlet Ibis, a 98 proof blend of Trinidadian rums made specifically for Death & Company. Imported by Eric Seed of Haus Alpenz, The Scarlet Ibis is available commercially, though in limited quantities. In a pinch, Berry suggests, one could substitute either Sea Wynde or Santa Teresa 1796. When I cranked out a round of apricot-colored Punky Monkeys last night, I had no Buffalo Trace on hand, so mixed equal parts Wild Turkey 101 and Bulleit bourbons. What the hell: I was already putting blended rum in the glass, why not blended whiskey?

Purists be damned, this was a delicious drink.

Joaquin Simo’s Punky Monkey

1 oz Scarlet Ibis rum (see above)
l oz 90-proof bourbon (Buffalo Trace preferred)
½ oz sugar syrup
½ oz fresh lemon juice
½ oz fresh pineapple juice
Dash Angostura bitters
Dash Peychaud's bitters
5 green cardamom pods

Lightly muddle the cardamom pods. Add all other ingredients, then shake well with ice cubes. Strain through a fine-mesh wire sieve into a champagne coupe.

Note: If you scale up, go easy on the cardamom. A little goes a long way, so if, say, you quadruple the recipe, maybe only double the spice.

Goes wells with:

• In San Diego? Drop by our favorite neighborhood joint, Carnitas' Snack Shack. Pork belly, stellar burgers, foie gras different ways, steak sandwiches, poutine (alas, no poitin, but the pulled pork topping softens that particular blow). Our first week in the new house, we got takeout from this little North Park gem four times. 
• In New York? Mosy on by Death & Company to whet your whistle. There's a no reservations policy, but get in early and you should be fine.
• Looking for a birthday present for me? Aw, how sweet. I'll take some Scarlet Ibis. Go ahead and get one for yourself, too, at K&L.

Meyer Lemon Curd

It’s a blustery, cold day in San Diego. We’re having what some call a mizzle: part mist, part drizzle, all wretched. Wet bamboo slaps against the tightly shut windows. With each opening of the door comes a gust of wind and little indignant protests arise to meet it. Our black cat has wedged herself between couch pillows, one arm thrown over her eyes: a musty-smelling shadow grunting the majority of the protests.

Back in the kitchen, I’m insulated from most of this, but a glance out the back door reveals heavy grey clouds. We’re grilling steaks tonight. Coldness cascades off the door’s glass panes. A roast may have been a wiser option. Before my tea grows cold, I’ve got a new pot brewing. It’s been going like that for hours. But tea alone is a thin fuel, so I’ve pressed toasted English muffins and Meyer lemon curd into service to hold me over until the steaks are ready.

As I huddle inside and catch up on work at the kitchen table, that little jar of bright yellow spread brings me more happiness than it probably should. It’s my talisman against the cold, a reminder of warmer weather past and yet to come.

Mixing in the egg yolks

I’ve been making curds — and jams, jellies, marmalades, syrups, and other preserves — for the better part of two decades. As much as personal experience guides my dives into the preserving pan, I read just about anything I can get my hands for insight and ideas. Ingredient ratios for curds in particular are all over the board. In general, curds are sort of loosely-set custards or very thick sauces made of citrus sweetened with sugar and thickened with eggs and butter. Some recipes call for salt or water; some eschew citrus entirely for other flavors such as passion fruit. But you get the general idea.

A consultation of a few dozen sources revealed that proportions for those main ingredients, however, are all over the board for lemon curd. Six of those are presented in the following chart; Jane Grigson, Helen Witty, Emily Luchetti, Marion Cunningham, Alton Brown, and Alice Waters.

Various lemon curd ingredient ratios

The last column is my own working ratios for lemon curd. No water, no salt (though the barest amount, a knifepoint, would work), no egg whites. It borrows a technique from 19th century bartending coming back into vogue: creating an oleo saccharum, a sort of “sweet oil” by grinding together citrus zest and sugar. This extracts more flavorful citrus oils than merely zesting the skin into the mix.

Meyer Lemon Curd

2 Tbl lightly packed Meyer lemon zest (from 1-2 fruits)
1 c sugar
5 egg yolks
3 oz Meyer lemon juice
4 oz butter, cut into several small pieces

Make a double boiler by adding 1-2” of water to a medium saucepan. Bring the water to a simmer over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, in a metal bowl that rests in the top of the saucepan (but does not touch the surface of the water), combine the zest and sugar. Grind them together with a cocktail muddler or a wooden spoon so that the sugar is thoroughly impregnated with the color of the zest.

Add the egg yolks and whisk to combine. Add the juice and whisk again until smooth. Place the bowl on the saucepan. Whisk until thickened, 8-10 minutes, or until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the butter, one piece at a time. Allow each piece to melt and become fully incorporated before adding the next. Pour into a clean container refrigerate.

Lemon Buttermilk Pie

I prefer to eat out for breakfast rather than for dinner. There's something nice about starting the day with a great meal and then trundling off to work. This is nothing new. I've been a sucker for great breakfasts for years and when I find a place I really like, I tend to go back again and again.

In the early 1990's, Paradise Cafe in Lawrence, Kansas was one of those places. My friend David was a waiter at Paradise — and a big part of the reason I went. But nearly half the reason I made the short walk to the cafe was its lemon buttermilk pie. Available most days, but not always. Some mornings, my breakfast was simply tea and a slice of that pie.

Paradise Cafe is now closed and David moved to New York, but before we left Lawrence, he scored for me the recipe for the pie. I made it on a whim last night for the first time in years and was reminded of why I liked it in the first place; a light, sweet custard spiked with lemon zest and the tang of buttermilk that just collapses in my mouth was a fantastic way to cap the night.

These days, if I were to muck about with flavors, I would consider adding cardamom or a tot of rum, but the simplicity of the pie still resonates with me after all these years and I made it as I always do.

The original recipe called for making two pies at once, so — unless I plan to give one away — I scale it back for one. Here's my slightly tweaked recipe:

Lemon Buttermilk Pie

1.5 c sugar
3 eggs (4 if they're small)
2 Tbl all purpose flour
¼ c melted butter
¾ c buttermilk
1 lemon, zest and strained juice
pinch of salt
1 uncooked pie crust

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Combine the eggs, sugar, and flour in the bowl of a mixer. Mix until well blended and the mixture is a light yellow. Beat in the melted butter, buttermilk, lemon, and a pinch — just a knifepoint — of salt. Pour into the prepared pie crust and bake for 30-40 minutes until the center is just set. Set on a rack. It will thicken on cooling. 

I like it at room temperature, maybe slightly warm. Whipped cream if you like, but that would be overkill for me.

Goes well with:

• William S. Burroughs' Birthday Beer, another tale of mid-90's Lawrence, Kansas.
• Chocolate Pie with Dos Maderass PX Rum, a different diner-style pie I recently made.
• The ever-popular ginger pie, inspired by a college viewing of Harold & Maude. Easily the most read post I've ever written. 

Bookshelf: A Taste for Absinthe

In the mid-1990’s, resources for drinkers were nothing like what’s available today. Unless you were a collector of out of print booze tomes and bartenders’ guides, Mr. Boston’s little red book was about as good as it got. If your tastes leaned to the esoteric — moonshine, say, or absinthe — you were especially hard-pressed for reliable information in the United States. At least good moonshine could be found. Recipes for making ersatz absinthe, on the other hand, yielded universally wretched results.

I know. I tried as much of both as I could get my hands on. Most of the moonshine I kept. Most of the absinthe I gave away.

Now that absinthe is once more readily available in the US, it’s been showing up for the last several years in homes and bars that value in well-crafted cocktails. Some serve venerable cocktails, culled from the pages of pre-Prohibition bartenders’ guides. Others also pour more recent creations. R. Winston Guthrie and James F. Thompson’s A Taste for Absinthe examines them both and starts to answer the unasked questions: what the hell is this stuff and what do I do with it?

Guthrie is an absinthe expert and founder of Asbinthe Buyers Guide (see below). The book holds little new information for absinthe aficionados, but for curious novices it's accurate and truthful. Don't dismiss the value of that. With absinthe largely unavailable to them for most of the 20th century, Americans lost what little we knew about the stuff. As remaining stocks dwindled, myth and misinformation took hold. It was, rumor said, a poison. It caused hallucinations and madness.

The truth is far more mundane. Levels of thujone, the chemical said to drive men over the brink of sanity, were claimed by prohibitionists to have been outrageously high in pre-Prohibition absinthes. Modern forensic analyses of unopened bottles show that they weren’t. Whether or not thujone broke minds, it wouldn’t so do in the concentrations found in either classic or modern absinthes. The authors write:

In extremely high doses, thujone is dangerous, but the concentration of thujone actually found in the beverage absinthe is nothing to worry about. You would need to drink seven liters [!] of the undiluted spirit to have any adverse effect directly from thujone. The alcohol, and even the water [if you diluted it] would kill you before!

After dispensing with history, defining characteristics, tools and accoutrements, A Taste for Absinthe dives into 65 recipes of old and new drinks featuring the green fairy. The book wraps up with a buying guide — somewhat dated, but still a good place to start — for brands widely available to American shoppers.

Its recipes come from professional bartenders such as Jason Littrell, Neyah White, Daniel Hyatt, Eric Alperin, and Jeff Hollinger. You’ll find suggestions of mixing absinthes with mezcal, Lillet, fruit juices, egg whites, rum, honey, bison grass vodka, vermouth, rye whiskey, genever, gin, apricot brandy, bitter orange marmalade, and even sweetened condensed milk. Ok, I erpped a little at the last one, but, honestly, if Jason Lograsso mixed a Strutters’ Ball and put it in front of me, I’d give it a go.

Meanwhile, I’m mixing just enough absinthe with some of the newish 45 proof Crown Royal Black into a whisky cocktail the authors dub North of the Border.

North of the Border
.5 oz simple syrup (1:1)
.5 oz fresh lemon juice
.5 oz fresh orange juice
.5 oz absinthe
2 oz Crown Royal Black
Angostura bitters

Pour the simple syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, absinthe, and whisky into a cocktail shaker. Shake well, and pour the drink into a Collins glass filled with crushed ice. Add two dashes of bitters, and serve.

R. Winston Guthrie with James F. Thompson (2010)
Photos by Liza Gershman, foreward by Dale DeGroff
A Taste for Absinthe: 65 Recipes for Classic and Contemporary Cocktails
176 pages, hardback
Clarkson Potter Publishers
ISBN: 0307587533
$24.99

Goes well with:

• Absinthe Buyers Guide, Guthrie’s website with history, articles, and reviews of absinthes both for the US and international markets. 
• Amazon sells A Taste for Absinthe here

Marshmallow, an Untraditional Collins

Whether christened Tom or John, the Collins family of drinks dates back to the early 19th Century. They are essentially individual servings of a cool gin punch made popular at London’s Limmer’s Hotel by headwaiter John Collins some 30 to 40 years before civil war broke out in America.

Nevermind that Collins didn't actually invent the punch (in his 2010 book Punch, historian David Wondrich gives that honor to Stephen Price, the American manager of London's Garrick Club). To this day, a concoction of gin, lemon juice, some sweetener, and cold sparkling water bears the headwaiter's name. Well, his surname, anyway.

Variations on the drink — Bootsy, Barnabas, vodka, and Michael Collinses — came later. To this august and suspect list, I add my own: the Marshmallow Collins.

Several months ago, I wrote about my experiments with marshmallow syrup using the shredded root of Althaea officinalis, that is, real marshmallow plants rather than candy marshmallows (see below for link). At the time, I wrote

The cut root I purchased was perfectly dry and felt like any other root or shredded bark. But wait. In water it became mucilaginous; a thick, colloid, almost ropy syrup formed as the infusion sat overnight. Dry, it had just the faintest musty smell. Once it got wet, the smell was, well, rooty. Seriously. Smelled like someone had been digging up the garden.

It's a difficult syrup to work with. Not because of its thickness and tendency to stick to itself — which, admittedly, is a little odd — but because of its inherently bosky taste and smell. I happen to like it, but I don't like the way it mixes with whiskey. Gin is another story.

So when one of the boys suggested a round of Marshmallow Collinses last night, I smiled and let him put together a batch. Here's how we ended up making them:

Marshmallow Collins

3 oz gin (we used Beefeater)
1.5 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz real (e.g., Althaea officinalis) marshmallow syrup
Cold soda water

Combine the gin, lemon juice, and syrup in a shaker full of ice. Shake to combine and chill. Strain into a tall glass full of ice. Stir briefly, top with soda water, and serve.

Goes well with:

• Real Marshmallow Syrup — my original post about my syrup experiments with the odd little root. Includes French sirop de guimauve recipes and my modern update as used above.
• David Wondrich (2010) Punch: The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl Perigee/Penguin Group, New York. Innumerable plaudits from drinking types have been written about Wondrich's book. I can only add at this point that I wish all drinks books were so well written — and researched. Wondrich's isn't the only book on punch I own, but it is the best.

Egyptian Punch, An Untried Recipe

The milk punch family is divided into two main braches: whole and strained. The sort of milk punch you’re likely to encounter in New Orleans is what I call a whole-milk punch. Such a punch might be made with cream or milk, but the result is creamy, boozy, and takes on the color of the dairy that goes into it. Egg nog, brandy milk punch, bourbon milk punch, or even LSU Tiger’s milk punch are fair examples. In rare cases they are aged, but generally are served soon after mixing the ingredients.

The other sort is a strained milk punch. These have fallen from fashion and you’re less likely to encounter one. These are generally aged and mixed with high-acid citrus (such as lemon) that curdle the milk. They are then strained through filters such as flannel, cheesecloth, or paper. Fernand Point’s Liqueur du Grapillon is one example. Old American recipes for English or Italian lemonade call for the same technique: Mix sugar, lemon, milk, and sometimes spirits, let it stand to curdle, then strain and age the liquid. When it’s ready to drink, the resulting beverage is clear — though possibly colored by the spirits or other ingredients such as hibiscus.

Thumbing through the 1915 Pan-Pacific Cookbook, I came across a recipe for such a strained milk punch. I haven’t tried it yet, but the recipe is certainly older than 1915 and not particularly Egyptian. For the record, here’s

Egyptian Punch

Pare the thin rinds of eighteen lemons into a stone jar and cover with five pints each of Jamaica rum and whiskey; cover and let stand for thirty hours; add the lemon juice, three pounds of loaf sugar, two grated nutmegs, four quarts of water and, last, two quarts of boiling milk. Let it stand for half an hour, then mix well and strain — first, through a flannel bag and then through filter paper. Pout into bottles and cork tightly. The punch will be of light amber color and very clear. It improves with age.

Goes well with:

• Erik Ellestad has written about about strained milk punches at Underhill Lounge. He's not the first to write about Rum Hibiscus Milk Punch, but I do like his photos.
• Fernand Point’s Liqueur du Grapillon
• Bourbon House in New Orleans once served cantaloupe bourbon milk punch. It's not an everyday offering, but check in during warm weather and you might just find it churning away in the freezer behind the bar. 
• A brochure from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition — the Pan-Pacific in the cookbook's title — held in San Francisco (from the Museum of the City of San Francisco).

Pink Lemonade II: Charlatans at the Circus, Racetrack, and Church

Earlier this week I mentioned how I make pink lemonade. Same way as pink gin: with cocktail bitters. That’s just one way, though, and older bartending manuals include many ways to make the drink pink. In 1908, the Honorable William T. (Cocktail) Boothby published The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them. He addresses the pink stuff under the heading Circus Lemonade.

A casual glance at the recipe suggests that Boothby is an old-school charlatan, but he’s actually getting in digs at unscrupulous vendors at circuses, fairs…and churches.

Shocking—A bartender pointing out ecclesiastical lemonade hypocrisy. His method of adding raspberry syrup's not a bad drink, but ease off the sugar if that version tempts you.

Circus Lemonade

This drink in a barroom is a Plain Lemonade colored with raspberry syrup; but a proper Circus Lemonade is a beverage that is made to sell at large gatherings, such as services, fairgrounds, race-courses and church affairs, and is made in the following manner: —

Procure a large tub or headless barrel and fill it nearly full of water, add enough citric or tartaric acid to suit, and sweeten to taste with sugar. Two pounds of acid will make over 30 gallons of lemonade. Cochineal coloring…will make it a beautiful red color. Always slice up a few lemons or oranges and throw in. If you have no ice handy with which to cool this delightful beverage, procured a piece of glass and fasten to the sides of the barrel with strings, so it will float near the top, and put some of the sliced fruit on it. This little deception causes the drink to appear more inviting on a warm day. A strawberry is usually added a church fairs, and two or three berries might possibly be used for a picnic.

Hon Wm T. Boothby (1908)
The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them
143 pages, paperback
2009 reprint by Mud Puddle Books
ISBN 978-1-60311-189-8
$19.99
Buy it here.

Pink Lemonade: Empinken Your Drinkin’ with Bitters

In 1961, American humorist Bennett Cerf attributed the creation of pink lemonade to Peter Conklin, a concessions vendor in Mabie's Mighty Circus some time in the distant past. Faced with a water shortage on a hot day when demand for lemonade skyrocketed, Conklin raided a tub filled with water in which the circus’ fat lady had washed her red dress. A little sugar, some tartaric acid to fake the lemon and — viola — pink lemonade¹.

It’s a fun story. I’ve also heard it was her bloomers. Or a red horse blanket. Or pink riding tights. Once immensely popular and as American as apple pie, pink lemonade was indelibly linked to circuses and roasted peanuts but the story of its accidental washtub creation is just a little too tidy — and sufficiently risqué — to hold water. It sounds like a story for rubes and marks. For a more satisfying take on early examples, turn to another storied American institution: the saloon.

Early bartender’s manuals include dozens of recipes for lemonade — versions with seltzer, with claret, with port, with sherry, or with the almond-and-orange flower syrup orgeat abounded. If a customer asked for lemonade “with a wink” or “with a stick in it,” he’d be getting a jolt of whiskey. The same customer could get lemonade shaken with an egg. One could even belly up to lemonade with milk or cream — although these were generally strained since lemon juice curdles cream and Cement Mixer shots were as yet not in vogue.

Some of those fancy lemonades — especially with claret and port — could range anywhere from pinkish to purple, but flat-out pink examples could be made with a range of syrups, tinctures, and bitters. Strawberry, raspberry, and grenadine were popular syrups, but cinnamon and cochineal (a red tincture derived from a Oaxacan scale insect) saw some action as well. One might swap out tea for the water (sorry, Arnold Palmer: you weren’t the first) or add a bit of phosphate.

That’s all well and good, each refreshing in its own way, but I prefer the complexity of lemonades spiked with bitters and more than a few cocktail bitters turn lemonade a blushing hue. Recipes for Angostura Lemonade, for instance, appear in early manuals such as Frank Meier’s The Artistry of Mixing Drinks (1936), George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks (1900) and J.A. Grohusko’s 1910 classic Jack’s Manual.

Angostura bitters do indeed lend a hue to the drink that suggests pink, but there’s no denying the roseate blush brought on by a dose of the old New Orleans standard, Peychaud’s. Most bitters I’ll stir right into the lemonade, but the bright red Peychaud’s makes a striking float. Eventually, I stir it in, but there’s something almost seductive in a crimson slick, sending down little tendrils of pink melting ice causes the drink to swirl just a bit in the glass, reminding me that — at the moment — I’ve got nowhere to be.

Kappeler calls for a modest three dashes in his version. Others bump it to a teaspoon per serving. I’d say the final balance of sweet, sour, and bitter is up to your individual taste. Play with the proportions to come up with a formula you like, but here’s what I’ve been doing:

Pink Lemonade

3 oz fresh lemon juice
3 oz cold filtered water
1.5 to 2 oz simple syrup
3 dashes to 1 tsp bitters (dealer's choice)

Shake the lemon juice, water, and syrup over ice. Strain into a highball glass over fresh ice and top with a float of bitters. Serve with a spoon.

One may also put a stick in it, though I'd ease off the water if that's the path you want to take. Other bitters that won’t pink your drink, but are worthy additions to a bittered lemonade:

• The Bitter Truth’s Repeal Bitters — only 600 bottles were made to commemorate the 75th anniversary of end of Prohibition, but its intense cinnamon, cardamom, and citrus make it worth seeking out. Just a few dashes going a long way. If you can’t score or bum some from a cocktail geek, try Stephan Berg and Alexander Hauck’s other offerings such as Jerry Thomas’ Own Decanter Bitters. the-bitter-truth.com
• Urban Moonshine’s organic maple bitters. Maple syrup crops up in lemonade recipes now and then, so I gave these spray-bottle bitters a shot and liked the vaguely sweet and sweetly-spiced notes they lend to the drink. Either spritz the glass before adding the lemonade or give it a misting once you’ve poured over ice. Available in larger sizes. www.urbanmoonshine.com

1. Cerf, Bennett. “Try and Stop Me.” Reading Eagle 10 October 1961.

Photo © 2010, Douglas Dalay.

Don’s Mix and the Wood Eye Cocktail

“Would I? Would I?”
“Pegleg!”

~ punchline to a 2nd grade joke

The thing about making mixtures, tinctures, decoctions, and infusions for particular drinks at home is that doing so encumbers one with, frankly, an overabundance of mixtures, tinctures, decoctions, and infusions. In a bar, such things could well be consumed over the course of a single shift. Not so much at home—even my home.

This is not frustrating per se, but when the siren call of beverages calling for yet more homemade ingredients becomes irresistible, it seems a bit…excessive. Other than butter, ginger, a tin of Rougie foie gras, and tubes of Hungarian paprika paste, my refrigerator door is filled to capacity with such bottles. Simple syrup, palm syrup, mint syrup, syrups of ginger, black pepper, mango, and demerara.

But the one labeled Don’s Mix I keep refilling.

Don’s Mix, as revealed by tiki master Jeff Berry, is a 2:1 mix of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice to cinnamon syrup used by Donn “Don the Beachcomber” Beach in his seminal 1934 Zombie Punch. It is a disarmingly simple, but fantastic cocktail ingredient for mixing in a variety of rum drinks, but it’s best used within a day or so ~ a week at the very outside. My solution? I make a big batch and give some to folks I know will make quick use of it, then several little batches using additions of fresh grapefruit juice to the more stable cinnamon syrup.

After my friend Carlo hooked me up with a glut of grapefruit, I made a batch of cinnamon syrup, then started mixing. So far, we’ve made 1934 zombies, Donga Punch, and—among other trials—a potent little experiment I dubbed the Wood Eye Cocktail that brings together three different rums, a dose of lemon, and a few of those bottle contents. Careful, though: despite its diminutive size, too many of these will leave you feeling a little wood-eyed.

Eye Wood. Wooden Ewe?

Wood Eye Cocktail

1 ½ oz Jamaican rum (Appleton V/X)
¾ oz lemon juice, freshly squeezed
½ oz orgeat
½ oz Don’s Mix (see below)
½ oz Pusser’s rum
a float of Lemon Hart 151 rum

Shake all but the Lemon Hart over ice and strain into your favorite tiki mug or an old fashioned glass with fresh cubes. Carefully float enough Lemon Hart 151 on top to give it a discernable layer about as thick as two American quarters or, for our British friends, a one-pound coin. Sip the drink through the top layer and repeat as necessary.

Don’s Mix

2 parts grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed
1 part cinnamon syrup (below)

I like Dale DeGroff’s take on Don’s Mix in part because his recipe for the cinnamon syrup that goes into it yields an even liter (despite his note that the recipe yields 2 cups) that actually holds its own for several weeks under refrigeration.

Cinnamon Syrup

5 cinnamon sticks, each about 2 inches long
20 ounces bottle or filtered water
1 quart sugar

Break the cinnamon sticks into pieces to create more surface area. But the cinnamon, water, and sugar in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved, and then returns the heat to very low simmer for 30 minutes. Let cool completely, then fossil; keep covered in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Oh, and, uh, bad ol' Cashmere.
.