Death Flip

Eggnog

This Eggnog is made by the glass: 30ml of brandy, 15ml of dark rum, one egg separated, 60ml of whole milk, 30ml of cream and 20ml of sugar syrup. The yolk is whisked with the syrup until pale, then everything is dry shaken for 10 to 15 seconds, shaken hard with ice for 10 to 12 and strained into a chilled double rocks glass, with nutmeg grated over. About 1.8 UK units. It is uncooked. The egg is raw, and the drink contains milk and cream. The NHS says hen eggs with the British Lion stamp can be eaten raw, including in pregnancy; drink it as soon as it is made. The Oxford Companion calls eggnog an American invention of the mid-Atlantic region in the late colonial era, with the first printed references in New Jersey and Pennsylvania newspapers in 1788. It is often said to descend from the posset, which the Companion describes as a medieval drink of curdled milk or cream and wine or ale, warmed and often thickened with eggs; we have found no primary record of that line.

Porto Flip

A Porto Flip is 45ml of tawny port, 15ml of brandy and 10ml of egg yolk, dry shaken for 10 to 15 seconds, shaken hard with ice for 10 to 12 and double strained into a chilled coupe, with nutmeg grated over the top. About 1.5 UK units by our calculation. The measures are the IBA’s; the dry shake is ours. The yolk is raw. Use British Lion eggs, which the NHS says can be eaten raw, including in pregnancy, and leave the drink out for anyone allergic to egg. Port is a fortified wine and contains sulphites. A flip takes the whole egg or the yolk rather than the white alone, so the drink is emulsified and silky rather than foamed. Tawny port brings nut, dried fig and caramel, the brandy gives it backbone, and fresh nutmeg lifts what would otherwise sit heavy. It is one short glass after dinner.

Ramos Gin Fizz

A Ramos Gin Fizz is 45ml of London Dry gin, 15ml each of fresh lemon and lime juice, 30ml of sugar syrup, 30ml of egg white, 60ml of double cream, three dashes of orange flower water and two drops of vanilla extract, shaken long and hard, strained into a chilled highball with no ice and lifted with 60ml of soda water. About 1.8 UK units. It contains raw egg and dairy. Difford’s Guide, a secondary source, says Henry C. Ramos created it in 1888 at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon in New Orleans; the IBA gives the same year but a different bar. The Oxford Companion says the drink’s precise origins are unknown, that the earliest definite notice in print is from 1895, and that the likeliest period is 1892 to 1894. Difford’s quotes Stanley Clisby Arthur on 35 shaker boys at Ramos’s later bar, the Stag, during the 1915 Mardi Gras. The measures are the IBA’s. The shake is the work: cream and egg white need time to whip into a foam dense enough for the soda to push up out of the glass.

Margarita

A Margarita is 50ml of 100% agave blanco tequila, 20ml of triple sec and 15ml of fresh lime juice, shaken hard for 10 to 12 seconds and double strained into a chilled coupe with half the rim salted, with a lime wheel. About 2.8 UK units. Strained over fresh ice in a rocks glass, it is the same drink, longer and cooler. These are the IBA’s measures. The lime is the smallest pour, so the agave leads and the orange liqueur rounds it: the drink tastes of tequila first and sour second. The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, in an entry by David Wondrich, calls the origins of the Margarita one of cocktail history’s most notorious swamps, with at least half a dozen plausible claimants, among them Carlos Herrera at Rancho La Gloria in 1947, Margarita Sames in Acapulco in 1948 and the bartender Santos Cruz in Galveston in the same year. It finds the drink under the name Margarita in print in September 1953, in a California newspaper column, followed soon after by Esquire.