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Improved Whiskey Cocktail

An Improved Whiskey Cocktail is 60ml of rye whiskey with 5ml of maraschino liqueur, 2.5ml of absinthe, 10ml of demerara syrup and two dashes of Angostura bitters, stirred over ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained over one large cube in a rocks glass, with lemon peel expressed and dropped in. About 2.8 UK units. Difford’s Guide, reproducing it, says Jerry Thomas printed an Improved Whiskey Cocktail in his 1876 bar guide: the plain whiskey cocktail of spirit, sugar and bitters, with dashes of maraschino and absinthe added. The Oxford Companion says that once vermouth drinks arrived in the 1870s some drinkers kept to the tried-and-true formula and called for an “old-fashioned” cocktail. The additions are small on purpose. Each should sit behind the rye, never in front of it.

Old Fashioned

The IBA’s Old Fashioned is 45ml of bourbon or rye whiskey, one sugar cube, a few dashes of Angostura bitters and a few dashes of water; we use bourbon and two dashes. The sugar and bitters are muddled in a rocks glass until the cube dissolves, then ice goes in, the bourbon goes over it and the drink is stirred for 15 to 20 seconds. Orange peel is expressed over the top. About 1.9 UK units. Only the sugar and bitters are muddled: no orange flesh, no cherry. The recipe predates the name. The Oxford Companion says that when a newspaper in Hudson, New York, defined the cocktail in 1806, it described “spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters”. The name came later in the century: the Companion has people ordering Old-Fashioneds in Chicago in 1880, as bartenders added liqueurs to the format and drinkers who wanted it plain asked for one made the old-fashioned way.

Brooklyn

A Brooklyn is 60ml of rye whiskey and 22.5ml of dry vermouth, with 7.5ml each of maraschino liqueur and Averna and two dashes of orange bitters, stirred over ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained into a chilled Nick and Nora glass with a cherry. About 3.3 UK units. The Averna and orange bitters stand in for Amer Picon, the French bitter orange aperitif the old recipes call for. The Oxford Companion says Picon’s strength fell from about 40% ABV to 38% in the 1920s, 27% in the 1970s and 18% in 1989, and Punch says it is still largely unavailable in the United States; in our view any Brooklyn poured now is a reconstruction. Difford’s Guide says the Brooklyn as we know it first appears in print in Jacob Grohusko’s Jack’s Manual, 1908, as equal parts rye and Italian vermouth with a dash each of Picon and maraschino. In 1913 Jacques Straub’s manual, as Difford’s Guide reproduces it, made it with French, or dry, vermouth.