Midnight Stinger

Stinger

A Stinger is 50ml of cognac and 20ml of white crème de menthe, stirred with ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained over crushed ice in a rocks glass, with a sprig of mint if you want one. About 2.5 UK units. The measures are the IBA’s, which strains it up into a chilled cocktail glass instead. The Oxford Companion says the Stinger first appears in 1890 as the Bartholdi Cocktail, brandy and crème de menthe shaken together, that the same mix surfaced for two decades under other names, among them the Judge, a mix of brandy, crème de menthe and gum that William Schmidt printed in 1892, and that it hit big as the Stinger in 1913. The Companion calls it the king of after-dinner cocktails and says it petered out in the 1980s. There is no citrus and no bitters, so the cognac does most of the talking. The peppermint cools the finish and takes the edge off the brandy’s heat. Use white crème de menthe: the green is the same liqueur with colouring, and it turns the glass the colour of mouthwash.

Whiskey Smash

A Whiskey Smash is 60ml of bourbon, three lemon wedges, 20ml of sugar syrup and eight mint leaves. The lemon is muddled hard with the syrup and the mint pressed gently, then everything is shaken hard with ice for 10 to 12 seconds and strained over crushed ice in a rocks glass, with a mint sprig. About 2.4 UK units. Jerry Thomas’s bar guide of 1862, in the Internet Archive’s scan, describes the smash as “simply a julep on a small plan”. Punch dates Dale DeGroff’s fresh-fruit Whiskey Smash to 1988 at the Rainbow Room in New York, muddling lemon into the julep’s mint, sugar and whiskey. Muddled wedges put the oil from the peel into the drink as well as the juice. That is what separates a smash from a whiskey sour over crushed ice. Our measures are larger and drier than DeGroff’s published recipe, which adds water.

Paper Plane

A Paper Plane is 30ml each of bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino and fresh lemon juice, shaken hard and double strained into a chilled coupe. Four equal parts, which is the IBA specification: bitter orange, herbs and lemon over bourbon, at about 2.6 UK units. Punch, a secondary source, says Toby Maloney, who helped open The Violet Hour in Chicago, asked Sam Ross to create a drink for the bar, and that it was on the menu there in the summer of 2008. Ross named it after the M.I.A. song Paper Planes. The first version used Campari; Punch quotes Ross finding it slightly too bitter and short of sweetness, and he moved to Aperol. Equal parts leaves nowhere to hide. Squeeze the lemon the same day and use Nonino, not a cheaper amaro, because each ingredient is a quarter of the drink.

Hanky Panky

A Hanky Panky is 45ml of London Dry gin, 45ml of sweet vermouth and 7.5ml of Fernet-Branca, stirred with ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained into a chilled coupe, with an orange twist expressed over the top and dropped in. About 2.8 UK units. The measures are the IBA’s. Ada Coleman made it at the American Bar of the Savoy, where, the Oxford Companion says, she rose to head bartender before Harry Craddock displaced her in January 1926. The Companion quotes her telling The People in 1925 that she spent hours experimenting until she invented a new cocktail for the actor Charles Hawtrey, who had come in complaining of overwork. He either called it “the real hanky panky” on the spot or came in the next day asking for “that hanky panky stuff”, and the name stuck. Craddock put it in The Savoy Cocktail Book, in the Internet Archive’s scan. Equal gin and sweet vermouth make a sweet Martini. The Fernet-Branca, a bitter Italian amaro, adds menthol and dark herbs, cools the finish and keeps the vermouth from tasting syrupy.