Old
Fashioned
Cocktail
RECIPE
COCKTAIL
The Old Fashioned is a cocktail made by muddling
sugar with bitters, then adding alcohol, originally
whiskey but now sometimes brandy and finally
a twist of citrus rind. It is traditionally served in a
short, round, tumbler-like glass, which is called an
Old Fashioned glass, after the drink. The Old Fash-
ioned, developed during the 19th century and given
its name in the 1880s, is an IBA Official Cocktail.
It is also one of six basic drinks listed in David A.
Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.
George Kappeler provides several of the earliest published recipes for Old Fashioned cocktails in
his 1895 book. Recipes are given for Whiskey, Brandy, Holland gin, and Old Tom gin. The Whis-
key Old Fashioned recipe specifies the following (with a jigger being 2 US fluid ounces (59 ml)):
Old Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail
Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whis-
key-glass;
Add two dashes Angostura bitters,
A small piece of ice, a piece of lemon-peel,
One jigger whiskey.
Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass.
By the 1860s, as illustrated by Jerry Thomas’ 1862 book, basic cocktail
recipes included Curaçao, or other liqueurs. These liqueurs were not men-
tioned in the early 19th century descriptions, nor the Chicago Daily Tri-
bune descriptions of the “Old Fashioned” cocktails of the early 1880s; they
were absent from Kappeler’s Old Fashioned recipes as well. The differences
of the Old Fashioned cocktail recipes from the cocktail recipes of the late
19th Century are mainly preparation method, the use of sugar and water in
lieu of simple or gomme syrup, and the absence of ad-
ditional liqueurs. These Old Fashioned cocktail recipes
are literally for cocktails done the old-fashioned way.
Sugar
Available at Jimmy’s Bar
Urban Grill
Citrus
Peels
25 | Colossium . March 2019
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