Gin Cocktail
The Gin Cocktail is what the word cocktail meant before it meant anything else. The definition printed in 1806 was specific: spirit, sugar, water and bitters, and nothing else qualified. This is that formula with gin in the spirit slot, and Jerry Thomas printed it in 1862 among the first recipes anyone had bothered to write down. The build is small, stirred and dry. Sixty millilitres of gin, a barspoon of syrup, two dashes of Angostura and a lemon twist. Thomas also gives a fancy version with a barspoon of curaçao in it, which perfumes the drink without meaningfully sweetening it, and that is the version worth making. It is effectively an Old Fashioned, and it predates the name. The whiskey branch of the same formula became the Old Fashioned and, with absinthe, the Sazerac. The gin version simply stayed as it was and fell out of fashion, which is a shame, because it is very good and takes ninety seconds.
Glassware: Rocks Glass
Garnish: Lemon Twist expressed and dropped in
Ingredients
60ml
Old Tom is the period-correct choice and the softest; genever adds malt and takes the drink somewhere older still; London Dry is the brightest and what most people will prefer. All three are honest readings.
5ml
A barspoon and no more. The drink is meant to run dry, and if the gin is Old Tom, which is sweetened in the bottle, cut it further or leave it out.
5ml
Thomas's fancy version. A barspoon perfumes the drink with bitter orange without meaningfully sweetening it. Leave it out for the plain 1806 reading, which is also correct and rather more austere.
2 dashes
The ingredient that made the drink a cocktail under the original definition rather than a sling. Two dashes, which in a glass this small is a real presence.
Instructions
Add the gin, simple syrup, curaçao and bitters to a mixing glass.
Fill with cubed ice and stir for 20 seconds.
Strain into a rocks glass over one large cube.
Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
Expert Tip
Keep the sugar to a whisper. Five millilitres is a barspoon and it is meant to be barely there: this is an aperitif rather than a dessert, and the period reading runs dry. If you are using Old Tom, cut it further or leave it out altogether, because Old Tom is sweetened already. Choose the gin by which century you want. Old Tom is closest to what Thomas would have poured and makes the softest version. Genever adds malt and body and takes the drink somewhere maltier and stranger. London Dry gives the brightest, cleanest reading and is what most people will prefer. Twist over the surface and mean it. With four ingredients and no citrus juice, the oil from the peel is a substantial part of what you are drinking.
Flavour Profile
The 1806 Definition
The word cocktail was first defined in print in 1806, in a New York newspaper answering a reader who wanted to know what one was. The answer was precise: a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters.
That is a narrow definition and it was meant to be. It excluded slings, punches, juleps and everything else on the counter, and the distinguishing ingredient was the bitters. A gin sling is gin, sugar and water. Add bitters and it becomes a gin cocktail. The category we now use for every mixed drink started life as one specific recipe with one specific tell.
Jerry Thomas and the Fancy Version
Thomas's Bar-Tender's Guide of 1862 was the first cocktail book published anywhere, and it gives the Gin Cocktail in two readings. The plain one is the 1806 formula. The fancy one adds a barspoon of curaçao and a lemon twist, and Thomas notes that fancy drinks are for customers who want them made in a fancy way.
The curaçao is worth having. It contributes bitter orange rather than sugar, so it fills out the middle of a very spare drink without making it sweet. In a recipe with four ingredients, one of which is water, adding a fifth that occupies a gap is a bigger change than it sounds.
Which Gin, and Which Century
Thomas would have been pouring Old Tom or genever. London Dry as we know it was only just becoming the dominant British style, and the gin of the American bar for most of the nineteenth century was either sweetened or malty.
Old Tom is the closest reading. It has a touch of sugar built in, which means the syrup can drop almost to nothing, and it makes the roundest version. Genever is maltier and heavier and turns the drink into something closer to a whiskey drink in weight. London Dry is the sharpest and cleanest, and it is the version most people will actually prefer, which is a fair reason to make it.
What the Formula Became
Apply the same four ingredients to whiskey and you have what drinkers of the 1880s started asking for as an old-fashioned whiskey cocktail, meaning made the plain old way rather than with the newer liqueurs and syrups. The name stuck to the drink, and the Old Fashioned exists because of an argument about this formula.
Add absinthe to the whiskey version and you are most of the way to a Sazerac. The gin branch never needed a defensive name, which is probably why it quietly disappeared instead.
How to Serve It
Stirred short over ice, strained over one large cube in a rocks glass, lemon twist expressed over the surface.
Cold and before dinner. It has an Old Fashioned's manners at rather less than an Old Fashioned's weight, which makes it the better aperitif of the two.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Gin Cocktail?
The original 1806 formula built on gin: spirit, sugar, water and bitters, stirred and served short with a lemon twist. Jerry Thomas printed it in 1862, along with a fancy version that adds a barspoon of curaçao.
How is it different from an Old Fashioned?
It is the same formula with gin instead of whiskey, and it came first. The name Old Fashioned appeared decades later, when drinkers started asking for a whiskey cocktail made the plain old way rather than with the newer liqueurs.
Which gin should I use?
Old Tom is period-correct and the softest, genever is maltier and takes the drink somewhere older still, and London Dry is the brightest and what most people prefer. All three are honest readings of the recipe.
Why is there so little sugar in it?
Because the original was a small, dry aperitif rather than a sweet drink. Five millilitres is a barspoon, and with Old Tom, which is sweetened in the bottle, you can cut it further or leave it out entirely.
Master the Techniques
You Might Also Like
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.
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.
Martinez
The Martinez is the oldest documented ancestor of the Martini and the drink from which the entire stirred gin cocktail tradition most likely descends. It appeared in Jerry Thomas's 1887 bar guide in a form recognisable today: gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino, and bitters, stirred and served cold. The Martini took the format, swapped sweet vermouth for dry, removed the maraschino, and produced something cleaner and less complex. Whether that represents progress or loss depends entirely on which drink you are holding. The Martinez is richer, more layered, and more demanding of attention than the Martini it inspired. The sweet vermouth brings body and fruit character that dry vermouth does not; the maraschino introduces a dry cherry and almond note that sits underneath the gin without announcing itself; the bitters tie everything together. The official specification builds it at equal parts on London Dry with orange bitters, and that is the recipe above: drier, sharper, and more clearly a relative of the Martini. The nineteenth-century reading uses Old Tom, a shorter vermouth measure and Angostura, and it is carried below with its own proportions.
Where this one sits
Recipe by Jerry Can Spirits
Enjoyed This Recipe?
Explore our full collection of cocktails and discover your next favorite
Browse All Cocktails