Fancy Free
The Fancy Free is an Old Fashioned that uses maraschino liqueur instead of sugar. Rye, 15ml of maraschino, and two kinds of bitters. That is the entire drink. The swap does more than sweeten. Maraschino is made from whole marasca cherries, stones included, and the stones give it a dry almond note that has very little to do with the cherry flavour people expect. So the drink lands drier than the ingredient list suggests, with an aromatic, faintly nutty edge that plain sugar could not supply. The two bitters are not a flourish. Angostura sits at the back with its clove and cinnamon, orange bitters sit at the front with their peel, and dropping either one collapses the drink from stereo to mono. It appears in the mid-century American collections, usually cited to Albert Stevens Crockett's Old Waldorf-Astoria books. The name is the temperament: an Old Fashioned with its tie loosened.
Glassware: Rocks Glass
Garnish: Orange Twist
Ingredients
60ml
Rye rather than bourbon, because its pepper keeps the maraschino honest. Bourbon works and makes a softer, rounder drink, but the sweetness has less to push against and the almond can turn cloying.
15ml
The whole sweetening, and it has to be the real thing. Made from whole marasca cherries with the stones, which is where the dry almond note comes from. Cherry-jar syrup is sugar and flavouring and makes a lesser drink.
2 dashes
The dark half of the seasoning: clove and cinnamon at the back of the drink. Two dashes, and do not drop it in favour of doubling the orange, which leaves the whole thing bright and thin.
2 dashes
The bright half, at the front. It also sets up the orange twist, so the peel oil lands on something rather than arriving from nowhere. Two dashes.
Instructions
Add the rye, maraschino and both bitters to a mixing glass.
Fill the mixing glass with cubed ice and stir for 25 seconds.
Place one large cube in a rocks glass.
Strain over the cube.
Express an orange twist over the surface and drop it in.
Expert Tip
Use real maraschino. The drink is 15ml deep in it, which is a large measure for a liqueur this assertive, and there is nowhere for a substitute to hide. The syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries is a completely different product: sugar, colouring and almond flavouring, with none of the dry stone-fruit character that makes this drink work. Fifteen millilitres is also the ceiling. Maraschino is one of those bottles that goes from interesting to overwhelming across about 5ml, and at 20ml the almond stops being a note and becomes the whole drink. If you are new to it, start at 10ml and work up. Both bitters, every time. This is a three-ingredient drink and the seasoning is doing structural work. Angostura alone leaves it dark and slightly heavy; orange alone leaves it bright and thin. The pair is the point, and the orange twist finishes the argument the orange bitters started.
Flavour Profile
Where It Comes From
The specification runs through the mid-century American collections, and the usual citation is Albert Stevens Crockett's books on the Old Waldorf-Astoria bar, which recorded a great many drinks from the hotel's pre-Prohibition years.
Beyond that the trail is thin. No creator is recorded, and the name is the sort of period phrase that was applied to plenty of things. What can be said is that it sat in the books largely unmade for decades and came back with the modern revival's enthusiasm for maraschino, which had been a nearly forgotten bottle for most of the twentieth century.
Why Maraschino Instead of Sugar
An Old Fashioned needs a sweetener to round the spirit's edges. Sugar does that and nothing else, which is exactly its virtue in the parent drink.
Maraschino does the same job while adding two things sugar cannot. The first is the cherry, though not the cherry anyone expects: marasca cherries are small, sour and dark, nothing like the sweet glacé fruit the name suggests. The second is almond, which comes from the stones being crushed and distilled along with the fruit.
The result is a drink that reads dry despite carrying a full liqueur measure. The funk and the almond occupy the palate where sweetness would, so you register complexity rather than sugar.
The Two Bitters
Three-ingredient drinks live or die on their seasoning, and this one splits the job deliberately.
Angostura brings clove, cinnamon and a faint bitterness that sits underneath everything, tying the rye's grain to the liqueur's fruit. Orange bitters bring peel oil and a brighter, sharper lift at the top of the glass. They occupy opposite ends and neither substitutes for the other.
Make it once with only Angostura and once with only orange bitters, and the difference is obvious immediately. Angostura alone is dark and a little sullen. Orange alone is pretty and unsupported. It is one of the clearest demonstrations available of what bitters actually do.
Rye or Bourbon
Rye is the better choice and bourbon is not a mistake.
Rye is drier and peppery, and that pepper pushes back against 15ml of liqueur. The drink stays taut, and the almond reads as an aromatic rather than as a sweet note. This is the version worth making first.
Bourbon is rounder and carries more vanilla and corn sweetness of its own. Against maraschino that produces a softer, more dessert-leaning drink. It is perfectly pleasant, and if you find the rye version austere it is the obvious adjustment. Just be aware you are moving the drink toward sweetness rather than away from it.
How to Serve It
Over one large cube in a rocks glass, early evening. It is lighter on its feet than a standard Old Fashioned despite the same spirit measure, because the maraschino's dryness offsets its own sugar.
Stir for a full twenty-five seconds. Sixty millilitres of rye with only a liqueur alongside it needs real dilution, and an under-diluted version is sharp in a way that hides the almond entirely.
It is a good drink to pour for someone who thinks they dislike maraschino, which usually means they have only met it as a barspoon hiding in a Daiquiri or a Last Word. Here it is unmistakably the subject.
The Spirit
Whiskey (Rye)The whiskey the American classics were written for. Rye is dry and peppery where bourbon is sweet and broad, and a Manhattan or a Sazerac built on the wrong one is a noticeably different drink rather than a near miss.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Fancy Free cocktail?
An Old Fashioned that uses maraschino liqueur in place of sugar: 60ml rye, 15ml maraschino and two dashes each of Angostura and orange bitters, stirred over a large cube with an orange twist. It appears in the mid-century American collections.
Does it taste of cherries?
Less than you would expect. Maraschino is made from small sour marasca cherries with the stones included, so it carries a dry almond note as much as a fruit one. The drink lands drier and more aromatic than the ingredient list suggests.
Can I use cherry syrup instead of maraschino?
No. The syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries is sugar, colouring and almond flavouring, with none of the dry stone-fruit character the drink is built on. At 15ml there is nowhere for a substitute to hide.
Why two different bitters?
They work at opposite ends. Angostura’s clove and cinnamon sit at the back and tie the rye to the liqueur; orange bitters lift the top of the glass and set up the twist. Using one alone leaves the drink either sullen or thin.
Master the Techniques
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Improved Whiskey Cocktail
This drink is why the Old Fashioned is called the Old Fashioned. The original cocktail of the early 1800s was spirit, sugar, water and bitters and nothing else. As the century went on, bartenders started improving it with the imported luxuries arriving on the back bar: a little maraschino, a dash of absinthe, a better grade of sugar, a lemon twist. Jerry Thomas codified the result in his 1876 edition and called it Improved. Not everyone wanted it. Drinkers who preferred the plain version began asking for their whiskey cocktail made the old-fashioned way, and by the 1880s that counter-order had hardened into a name on menus. The Old Fashioned is the only classic cocktail named by a complaint, and every one poured since is technically a vote against this drink. Taste them side by side and the argument replays. The maraschino adds a dry cherry and almond glow, the absinthe threads a herbal shadow through the rye, and what you end up with sits somewhere between an Old Fashioned and a Sazerac. Improvement was a fair description.
Old Fashioned
The Old Fashioned is the oldest documented cocktail in the American canon and the drink from which the word cocktail derives its original meaning. Its first print definition, in 1806, as a stimulating liquor composed of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters, describes the Old Fashioned before the name existed. The name came in the 1880s, when bartenders began adding fruit and soda to the format and drinkers who preferred the original asked for their cocktail the old-fashioned way. Three ingredients in their purest form: whiskey, sugar, and bitters; the expressed orange peel and the ice are conditions of the serve rather than additions. The simplicity is the entire point. Built properly, with a quality bourbon or rye, it is one of the most satisfying drinks in the canon; built badly, one of the most disappointing. Rye versus bourbon is the most common argument and the least interesting one. Both are correct. Rye produces a drier, spicier result where the bitters are more prominent; bourbon a rounder, sweeter one where the vanilla and caramel of the grain lead. What is a matter of correctness: sugar fully dissolved, bitters measured rather than dashed freely, and the drink stirred rather than shaken.
Brooklyn
The Brooklyn is a dry Manhattan with two seasonings: a barspoon of maraschino and a barspoon of Amer Picon. Jacob Grohusko printed it in Jack's Manual in 1908, and it is the drink that gave the borough its cocktail identity, eventually producing the Red Hook, the Greenpoint, the Bensonhurst and a dozen more. The problem is the Picon. It was a French bitter orange aperitif at high proof, reduced and reformulated through the twentieth century, so the bottle the recipe assumed no longer exists in any obtainable form. Every modern Brooklyn is therefore a reconstruction, and it is more honest to say so than to pretend a substitution is the original. This version uses Averna with two dashes of orange bitters, which is the accessible route: the amaro supplies the bitterness and the body, the bitters supply the orange. Bigallet China-China is closer to the original voice if you can find a bottle of it.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
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