Alexander
The Alexander is the cream family’s founding document, and it surprises most drinkers: the original is gin. Gin, white crème de cacao and cream in equal thirds, out of the American bars of the 1910s with the contested paternity typical of the period. Troy Alexander at Rector’s is among the claimants and nobody has ever settled it. The brandy version conquered later and took the qualified name with it, which is how the ancestor ended up sounding like a variation on its own child. Equal thirds is the constitution, and juniper against cream is the founding argument: botanical sharpness cutting the dairy where cognac would simply join it. It drinks lighter and stranger than the famous one. Where a Brandy Alexander is plush and unambiguously a pudding, this reads closer to an aperitif in a dessert dress, which is the pair’s whole division of labour and a good reason to keep the older bottle in play.
Glassware: Nick & Nora Glass
Garnish: Freshly Grated Nutmeg
Ingredients
30ml
The surprise original, and the family’s founding argument. Juniper cuts the cream where cognac joins it, which is what makes this the lighter and stranger of the pair.
30ml
The rounding third, and white rather than brown for the pale original. Cocoa butter over confectionery is what to look for; the cheap bottles taste of chocolate spread.
30ml
The silk third. Single cream shaken hard is the family law, and the shake needs to be genuinely violent or the texture stays cold rather than becoming silky.
Instructions
Add the gin, crème de cacao and cream to a shaker with ice.
Shake very hard for 12 seconds.
Double strain into a chilled Nick & Nora.
Grate fresh nutmeg over the surface.
Expert Tip
Equal thirds and violence, which are the cream family’s two laws and both date from this drink. Thirty, thirty and thirty is the balance and it does not want adjusting: the entire point of the format is that proportion does the work seasoning would otherwise do. Then shake it far harder than feels reasonable, because cream needs real aeration to turn silky rather than merely cold, and twelve full seconds is the minimum rather than the target. White crème de cacao rather than brown, since the original is pale and the brown bottle muddies both the colour and the drink. Double strain, and grate the nutmeg fresh over the surface: pre-ground nutmeg is dust, and it contributes nothing but the appearance of having bothered.
Behind the Alexander
Flavour Profile
The Origin
The Alexander surfaces in the 1910s with its attribution contested in the manner of the period, Troy Alexander of Rector’s in New York among the claimants and none of them decisively proven.
What is not disputed is the spec. The founding version is gin-based and pale, and the brandy reading arrived later, conquered the category and took the qualified name for itself. That is why the ancestor is the one now called simply an Alexander while its more famous descendant carries the explanatory prefix, which is precisely the wrong way round historically and too late to fix.
The Gin Argument
Juniper against cream sounds wrong and is the whole reason the drink exists. Botanical sharpness cuts through dairy in a way that cognac, which is soft and round and sweet-edged, never attempts.
The result is a cream drink with an edge to it. It is still rich, still cocoa-scented, still recognisably a member of the family, but there is something dry and slightly resinous running underneath that keeps the glass from settling into pure sweetness. That is what makes it aperitif-adjacent where its child is squarely a dessert, and it is why the original deserves to be poured rather than merely noted.
Equal Thirds
Thirty, thirty, thirty. The format is the drink’s real invention, and it is a genuinely unusual piece of design: three ingredients at identical volume, balanced by architecture rather than by adjustment.
There is nothing to season with here. No bitters, no acid, no dilution ritual beyond the shake. Each third checks the other two, and moving any of them exposes the drink immediately. That constraint is what made the template so portable: change the spirit and the proportions still hold, which is exactly what the next fifty years of bartenders proceeded to do with it.
The Family It Started
The equal-thirds cream constitution built a dynasty. Brandy conquered the name. The Grasshopper swapped both non-cream ingredients for green and white crème de menthe and cacao. The Golden Cadillac took the Galliano road. The Silk Stocking crossed the whole idea to tequila and added a grenadine blush.
Every one of them keeps the proportions and most keep the grated nutmeg on top as a kind of family crest. It is one of the most productive templates in the canon, and all of it comes from three equal measures and a hard shake.
How to Serve It
Up, very cold, in a chilled Nick & Nora, with nutmeg grated over the surface at the last moment. The nutmeg is aromatic rather than decorative and it needs to be fresh to do anything at all.
It works at either end of dinner, which its children mostly do not: the gin keeps it dry enough to open an evening and the cream keeps it rich enough to close one. If you want the argument made in two glasses, pour it beside a Brandy Alexander and taste them in that order.
Make it at home
The Spirit
GinA flavour requirement rather than a method. The law asks only that juniper be the predominant taste and that the spirit reach 37.5%, which leaves everything else on the botanical bill to the distiller and permits a gin that was never redistilled at all.
Master the Techniques
More to explore
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the original Alexander made with gin?
What does the gin version taste like?
Why equal thirds?
White or brown crème de cacao?
You Might Also Like
Brandy Alexander
The Brandy Alexander is equal parts cognac, dark crème de cacao and cream, shaken hard and served up under a heavy grating of nutmeg. It is the definitive dessert cocktail of the twentieth century and it has never seriously been challenged for the title. It is a variation that overtook its parent. The original Alexander is a gin drink with white crème de cacao, and it is genuinely good. Somebody swapped cognac in after the First World War and took the cacao dark at the same time, and the result was so much better suited to the end of a meal that within a few decades the child had taken the family name. Ask for an Alexander in most bars now and you will be handed this. Two darkenings, then: brandy's oak where juniper was, chocolate depth where cocoa butter sat. The equal thirds and the violence of the shake never moved.
Grasshopper
The Grasshopper is New Orleans’ green dessert: born by the standard account at Tujague’s in the French Quarter around 1918, second prize in a New York competition and first prize in posterity. Green crème de menthe and white crème de cacao share cream in equal thirds, the colour named it, the South adopted it, and the 1950s supper clubs canonised it. The build is the Alexander constitution in mint dress, with one significant difference: the two liqueurs take the base spirit’s place between them, so there is no spirit anywhere in the glass at all. It is the family’s first all-liqueur member, and gentle by construction rather than by any act of restraint. Green crème de menthe is constitutional here, which makes this the one drink where the usual preference for the white bottle inverts. The colour is the name, and any other combination of the two bottles muddies the grasshopper into a khaki brown.
Silk Stocking
The Silk Stocking is tequila’s dessert secret, and almost nobody knows it exists. Blanco folded into cream and white crème de cacao with a grenadine blush, dusted with cinnamon and served up. It comes out of the mid-century guides, from a period when the range of what tequila could do was still being mapped, and somebody thought to try it in the Alexander’s frame. The answer, improbably, was yes. Spirit, cacao and cream is the Alexander family’s constitution, and blanco’s pepper does what gin’s juniper does in the original: it cuts the richness and stops the whole thing sliding into a milkshake. Cognac in a Brandy Alexander joins the cream. Tequila argues with it. The grenadine is this version’s own signature, tinting the silk pink and laying a pomegranate seam underneath the cocoa. No author has ever been attached to it, which is a shame, because it is the best after-dinner argument tequila has.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits