Cameron’s Kick
Cameron’s Kick is a sour that should not work twice over. The base is split between Scotch and Irish whiskey, a pairing neither island has ever requested, and the sweetener is orgeat, which puts marzipan against malt. Harry MacElhone printed it in Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails in 1922. The split is the interesting part. Scotch brings a dry cereal character and Irish brings a softer, orchardy one, and at equal measure they overlap into something that tastes like a third whisky neither bottle contains. Favour either island and the effect collapses, which is why the measures are equal rather than approximate. Nobody knows who Cameron was. MacElhone names the drink and keeps the secret, and a century of people looking has not produced an answer. What survives is a spec that reads considerably more modern than 1922 has any right to: a split base, an unexpected sweetener, and a result that is nutty, malty and improbably elegant.
Glassware: Coupe Glass
Garnish: Lemon Twist or nothing in the Paris manner
Ingredients
30ml
Half the base, and unpeated. Smoke will not overlap with anything, so a peated malt sits on top of the Irish rather than blending into it and the whole effect disappears.
30ml
The other half, and the softer one. Its orchard character is what the Scotch's dry cereal overlaps with, and equal measure is a condition rather than a suggestion.
22.5ml
The sour frame holding two whiskies to business. Twenty-two millilitres is a shade short of a full measure, because the orgeat brings body as well as sugar.
15ml
Real almond, doing the same job it does in an Army & Navy: rounding the seam between the two spirits and answering the lemon. A synthetic bottle is sugar with flavouring.
Instructions
Add both whiskies, the lemon juice and the orgeat to a shaker.
Fill with cubed ice and shake hard for 12 seconds.
Double strain into a chilled coupe.
Express a lemon twist over the surface if you are dressing it.
Expert Tip
Keep the split exactly equal. Thirty and thirty is the condition the whole drink depends on: the phantom third whisky only appears when neither half is leading, and shifting the balance by even five millilitres brings one island forward and the effect goes. Use an unpeated Scotch. Smoke is the one thing that will not overlap with anything: a peated malt sits on top of the Irish rather than blending with it, and the drink becomes a smoky sour with something else in it. Real almond orgeat, as always. Fifteen millilitres of it is doing the same job it does in an Army & Navy, which is rounding a seam and answering the lemon, and a synthetic bottle is sugar with flavouring.
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
Harry MacElhone printed it in Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails in 1922, working out of the Paris bar that still carries his name. The book is one of the essential records of what the expatriate bars of the period were actually pouring, and it contains a great many drinks that did not survive.
This one did, and it came back properly with the revival. Cameron is unidentified. The book names the drink and offers nothing else, and a hundred years of people looking have not turned up a plausible candidate. It is one of the more comprehensively lost origin stories in the canon.
The Phantom Blend
Scotch and Irish whiskey at equal measure is the drink's whole idea, and describing what it does is harder than tasting it.
Scotch brings dry cereal, a faint mineral edge and a certain austerity. Irish is softer, rounder and more orchard-fruited, generally lighter in body. Neither is complicated on its own.
Put them together at exactly thirty and thirty and they do not read as two whiskies. They overlap into something that tastes like a third malt, with the Scotch's structure and the Irish's fruit occupying the same space rather than sitting in layers. It is genuinely strange, and the drink's partisans will tell you the phantom is the real base.
Shift the ratio and it collapses immediately. One island comes forward and you are drinking a blend.
Almond Against Whisky
The second surprise is the orgeat, which has no obvious business in a whisky drink.
What it does is round the seam. Two spirits meeting will always have a join in it somewhere, and orgeat's body and marzipan weight fill that gap in a way sugar syrup cannot. It also answers the lemon exactly as it does in an Army & Navy, giving the sour a silkiness with no egg white involved.
Almond and malt turn out to be natural neighbours, which is not something anybody would predict from the ingredient list and is obvious within one mouthful.
Why It Reads Modern
A split base, an unexpected sweetener and a flavour that exists in neither bottle is a description of a great many drinks built in the last fifteen years. This one is from 1922.
That is why the revival adopted it so enthusiastically. Most rediscovered pre-Prohibition drinks are interesting because they show how differently people drank; this one is interesting because it shows they were already doing what we think of as modern, and doing it well.
The 1920s produced a great many experiments. Most were tidier than this and none of them lasted as well.
How to Serve It
Shaken hard for twelve seconds, double strained into a chilled coupe, lemon twist if you want to dress it.
Cold and without explanation. The phantom does its own introducing, and telling somebody what is in it beforehand tends to produce a scepticism that one mouthful removes.
The Spirit
Whisky (Scotch)Whisky made in Scotland and matured there in oak for at least three years. The rules are unusually tight about what may go in: water and plain caramel colouring are the only permitted additions, so everything else in the glass came from grain, cask and time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Cameron’s Kick?
A sour with its base split equally between Scotch and Irish whiskey, sweetened with orgeat and balanced with lemon. Harry MacElhone printed it in Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails in 1922, and it produces a flavour neither bottle contains alone.
Who was Cameron?
Nobody knows. MacElhone named the drink in 1922 and recorded nothing else, and a century of people looking has produced no plausible candidate. The name is all that survives of whoever it belonged to.
Why does the split work?
Because the two whiskies overlap rather than layer. Scotch's dry cereal and Irish's softer orchard character occupy the same space at equal measure and read as a third malt. Shift the ratio and one island comes forward instead.
Can I use a peated Scotch?
Not without losing the drink. Smoke will not overlap with anything, so a peated malt sits on top of the Irish rather than blending into it, and you end up with a smoky sour instead of the phantom blend.
Master the Techniques
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Army & Navy
The Army & Navy is a gin sour with orgeat in place of the sugar. That is the entire design, and it does what the same swap does in a Mai Tai: almond brings marzipan weight and a floral edge that plain syrup cannot supply, rounding the lemon and softening the juniper without blurring either. The spec turns up in bar books of the 1930s, and it owes its survival largely to David Embury, who included it in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks in 1948 while complaining, as he did about most things, that everybody else had the proportions wrong. The name honours the Army-Navy game, the American service academies' football rivalry that has been played since 1890. The drink has a certain parade-ground neatness that suits it: three ingredients and a dash, up in a coupe, nothing surplus. It has outlived a great many drinks with better stories attached to them.
Whiskey Sour
The Whiskey Sour is one of the oldest documented cocktails in the American canon, printed in Jerry Thomas’s 1862 bar guide, and its structure of whiskey, fresh lemon and sugar is the template every other whiskey sour derives from. The Honey Sour changes the sweetener. The Penicillin changes the sweetener and the technique. The Amaretto Sour changes the base spirit. Understand this drink and the whole family becomes readable. The egg white question matters more here than in most sours, because both versions are widely ordered and both are correct. With it, the drink is a Boston Sour: silky, with the foam carrying the bourbon’s vanilla to the nose before the lemon reaches the palate. Without it, sharper and more direct. Pre-made sour mix has shown a generation this drink at its worst. Built with lemon squeezed to order, a decent bourbon and a properly proportioned syrup, it surprises almost everyone whose expectations were formed by the imitation.
Irish Coffee
The Irish Coffee was invented at the Foynes flying-boat terminal on the Shannon estuary in 1943, when chef Joe Sheridan was asked to warm a planeload of passengers turned back by Atlantic weather. He put Irish whiskey in their coffee, and when an American asked whether it was Brazilian coffee, Sheridan answered that it was Irish coffee. The terminal became Shannon Airport, the drink became the house welcome, and a genuine classic was born in a departure lounge. Its second act belongs to San Francisco. Travel writer Stanton Delaplane drank it at Shannon and spent a night in 1952 helping the Buena Vista Cafe reverse-engineer it, a process that famously stalled on the cream refusing to float. The cafe has poured tens of millions since. What separates a real Irish Coffee from hot whiskey with dairy is architecture: hot sweetened coffee and spirit below, cold thick cream above, and the drink taken through the cream so every sip arrives twice, warm then cool, bitter then rich.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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