Old Fashioned
Encyclopedia
The Old Fashioned is a type of cocktail
made by muddling dissolved sugar with bitters
then adding alcohol, such as jenever
, whiskey, or brandy
, and a twist of citrus rind. The name references the combination's age: it is possibly the first drink to be called a cocktail.
It is traditionally served in a short, round, 8 USfloz tumbler
-like glass, which is called an Old Fashioned glass
, named after the drink.
The Old Fashioned is one of six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury
's classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks
.
. In the May 13, 1806, issue, the paper's editor wrote that it was a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar; it was also referred to at the time as a bittered sling
.
The first alleged use of the specific name "Old Fashioned" was for a Bourbon whiskey
cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club
, a gentlemen’s club in Louisville, Kentucky
. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
bar in New York City
.
The "Old Fashioned" was the favorite cocktail of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman and his wife Bess
.
Preparation of a drink quite similar to an Old Fashioned is mentioned in chapter 18 in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884), second paragraph.
, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger [1.5 fl oz or 44 ml] whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass."
David Embury's classic book published in 1948 provides a slight variation, also generally accepted among purists:
Two additional recipes from the 1900s vary in the precise ingredients, but continue to omit the cherry expected in a modern Old Fashioned, as well as the top off of soda water contested by cocktail purists. Orange bitters were highly popular at this time and, for the second recipe, the Curaçao appears to have been added to increase the orange flavor
, brandy
is substituted for whiskey (sometimes called a Brandy Old Fashioned). Many drinkers prefer to use rye whiskey because of its complexity.
Most modern recipes top off an Old Fashioned cocktail with soda water. An Old Fashioned "sweet" is mixed with a lemon-lime soda (like Sprite
), whereas an Old Fashioned "sour" is made with a citrus-flavored beverage (like Squirt). Purists decry this practice, and insist that soda water is never permitted in a true Old Fashioned cocktail.
Many bartenders add fruit, typically an orange slice, and muddle it with the sugar before adding the whiskey. This practice likely began during the Prohibition era in the United States
as a means of covering the bitter taste. Another explanation for the practice is that citrus is often used in place of bitters in areas where citrus fruit grows (such as Florida and California). Hence, the fresh San Diego old fashioned uses limes, lemons, oranges, and soda water rather than bitters and simple syrup. The drink may have been imported to California during World War II
, when many Midwestern and Southern servicemen moved to San Diego, the site of a major Navy
base.
Purists advocate using just enough plain water (called "branch" water) to fully dissolve the sugar without diluting the whiskey.
Bartenders often use a dissolved sugar-water premix called simple syrup, which is faster to use and eliminates the risk of leaving undissolved sugar in the drink, which can spoil a drinker's final sip. Others use only the juice of a maraschino cherry, along with the muddled and mangled cherry left at the bottom of the glass.
One popular garnish is a maraschino cherry
fastened to the back of an orange wedge using a toothpick. Others prefer to use orange zest with the maraschino cherry. Some prefer a green olive garnish with an Old Fashioned "sour."
A popular variation in the Midwest is a Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet, which involves muddling a maraschino cherry
, a tsp. of sugar, an orange slice and a few dashes of bitters and filling with lemon-lime soda.
Cocktail
A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink that contains two or more ingredients—at least one of the ingredients must be a spirit.Cocktails were originally a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. The word has come to mean almost any mixed drink that contains alcohol...
made by muddling dissolved sugar with bitters
Bitters
A bitters is an alcoholic beverage that is flavored with herbal essences and has a bitter or bittersweet flavor. There are numerous brands of bitters that were formerly marketed as patent medicines but are now considered to be digestifs, rather than medicines...
then adding alcohol, such as jenever
Jenever
Jenever , is the juniper-flavored and strongly alcoholic traditional liquor of the Netherlands and Belgium, from which gin evolved...
, whiskey, or brandy
Brandy
Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink...
, and a twist of citrus rind. The name references the combination's age: it is possibly the first drink to be called a cocktail.
It is traditionally served in a short, round, 8 USfloz tumbler
Tumbler
Tumbler may refer to:* A part of a lock whose position must be changed by a key in order to release the bolt...
-like glass, which is called an Old Fashioned glass
Old fashioned glass
The Old Fashioned glass, lowball glass, or rocks glass is a short tumbler used for serving an alcoholic beverage, such as whisky, with ice cubes...
, named after the drink.
The Old Fashioned is one of six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury
David A. Embury
David Augustus Embury was an American attorney and author of The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks , a classic encyclopedia of the 20th century cocktail....
's classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks
The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks
The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks is a classic cocktail book by David A. Embury, first published in 1948. The book is noteworthy for its witty, highly opinionated and conversational tone, as well as its categorization of cocktails into two main types: aromatic and sour; its categorization of...
.
History
The first documented definition of the word "cocktail" was in response to a reader's letter asking to define the word in the May 6, 1806, issue of The Balance and Columbia Repository in Hudson, New YorkHudson, New York
Hudson is a city located along the west border of Columbia County, New York, United States. The city is named after the adjacent Hudson River and ultimately after the explorer Henry Hudson.Hudson is the county seat of Columbia County...
. In the May 13, 1806, issue, the paper's editor wrote that it was a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar; it was also referred to at the time as a bittered sling
Singapore Sling
The Singapore Sling is a cocktail that was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon , a bartender working at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel Singapore...
.
The first alleged use of the specific name "Old Fashioned" was for a Bourbon whiskey
Bourbon whiskey
Bourbon is a type of American whiskey – a barrel-aged distilled spirit made primarily from corn. The name of the spirit derives from its historical association with an area known as Old Bourbon, around what is now Bourbon County, Kentucky . It has been produced since the 18th century...
cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club
Pendennis Club
The Pendennis Club is a private club in Louisville, Kentucky. It was established in 1881 and modeled in part on English gentleman's clubs. It took its name from William Makepeace Thackeray's novel Pendennis . The first clubhouse, acquired in 1883, was a former Belknap family mansion. Soon after...
, a gentlemen’s club in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
The Waldorf-Astoria is a luxury hotel in New York. It has been housed in two historic landmark buildings in New York City. The first, designed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, was on the Fifth Avenue site of the Empire State Building. The present building at 301 Park Avenue in Manhattan is a...
bar in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
The "Old Fashioned" was the favorite cocktail of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman and his wife Bess
Bess Truman
Bess Truman , was the wife of Harry S. Truman and First Lady of the United States from 1945 to 1953.-Early life:...
.
Preparation of a drink quite similar to an Old Fashioned is mentioned in chapter 18 in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by...
(1884), second paragraph.
Recipe
There is great contention on the proper way to make an Old Fashioned. One of the earliest recipes, written in 1895, specifies the following: "Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bittersAngostura bitters
Angostura bitters, often simply referred to as angostura, is a concentrated bitters made of water, 44.7% alcohol, gentian root, and vegetable flavoring extracts by House of Angostura in Trinidad and Tobago. They are typically used for flavoring beverages, or food...
, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger [1.5 fl oz or 44 ml] whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass."
David Embury's classic book published in 1948 provides a slight variation, also generally accepted among purists:
- 12 parts American whiskey
- 1 part simple syrup
- 1-3 dashes Angostura bitters
- Twist of lemon peel over the top, and serve garnished with the lemon peel and a maraschino cherry.
Two additional recipes from the 1900s vary in the precise ingredients, but continue to omit the cherry expected in a modern Old Fashioned, as well as the top off of soda water contested by cocktail purists. Orange bitters were highly popular at this time and, for the second recipe, the Curaçao appears to have been added to increase the orange flavor
Use old-fashioned cocktail glass. Sugar, 1 lump. Seltzer, 1 dash, and crush sugar with muddlerMuddlerA muddler is a bartender's tool, used like a pestle to mash — or muddle — fruits, herbs, and/or spices in the bottom of a glass to release their flavor....
. Ice, one square piece. Orange bittersOrange bittersOrange bitters is a cocktail flavoring made from the peels of Seville oranges, cardamon, caraway seed, coriander and burnt sugar in an alcohol base. Some cocktail recipes which traditionally contained orange bitters may now exclude that ingredient because it has not been available for some time...
, 1 dash. Angostura bitters, 1 dash. Lemon peel, 1 piece. Whiskey, 1 jigger. Stir gently and serve with spoon.
1 dash Angostura bitters 1 dash Curaçao Piece of cut loaf sugarSugarloafA sugarloaf was the traditional form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century when granulated and cube sugars were introduced. A tall cone with a rounded top was the end product of a process that saw the dark molasses-rich raw sugar, which had been imported from...
Dissolve in two spoonfuls of water 100% liquor as desired 1 piece ice in glass. Stir well and twist a piece of lemon peel on top and serve
Modifications
In some areas, especially WisconsinWisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
, brandy
Brandy
Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink...
is substituted for whiskey (sometimes called a Brandy Old Fashioned). Many drinkers prefer to use rye whiskey because of its complexity.
Most modern recipes top off an Old Fashioned cocktail with soda water. An Old Fashioned "sweet" is mixed with a lemon-lime soda (like Sprite
Sprite (soft drink)
Sprite is a transparent, lemon-lime flavored , caffeine free soft drink, produced by the Coca-Cola Company. It was introduced in the United States in 1961. This was Coke's response to the popularity of 7 Up, which had begun as "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda" in 1929...
), whereas an Old Fashioned "sour" is made with a citrus-flavored beverage (like Squirt). Purists decry this practice, and insist that soda water is never permitted in a true Old Fashioned cocktail.
Many bartenders add fruit, typically an orange slice, and muddle it with the sugar before adding the whiskey. This practice likely began during the Prohibition era in the United States
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
as a means of covering the bitter taste. Another explanation for the practice is that citrus is often used in place of bitters in areas where citrus fruit grows (such as Florida and California). Hence, the fresh San Diego old fashioned uses limes, lemons, oranges, and soda water rather than bitters and simple syrup. The drink may have been imported to California during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when many Midwestern and Southern servicemen moved to San Diego, the site of a major Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
base.
Purists advocate using just enough plain water (called "branch" water) to fully dissolve the sugar without diluting the whiskey.
Bartenders often use a dissolved sugar-water premix called simple syrup, which is faster to use and eliminates the risk of leaving undissolved sugar in the drink, which can spoil a drinker's final sip. Others use only the juice of a maraschino cherry, along with the muddled and mangled cherry left at the bottom of the glass.
One popular garnish is a maraschino cherry
Maraschino cherry
A maraschino cherry is a preserved, sweetened cherry, typically made from light-colored sweet cherries such as the Royal Ann, Rainier, or Gold varieties...
fastened to the back of an orange wedge using a toothpick. Others prefer to use orange zest with the maraschino cherry. Some prefer a green olive garnish with an Old Fashioned "sour."
A popular variation in the Midwest is a Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet, which involves muddling a maraschino cherry
Maraschino cherry
A maraschino cherry is a preserved, sweetened cherry, typically made from light-colored sweet cherries such as the Royal Ann, Rainier, or Gold varieties...
, a tsp. of sugar, an orange slice and a few dashes of bitters and filling with lemon-lime soda.