Monster in a Glass

With very few appearances in cocktail books, or really anywhere, it is probably fair to say that the “Have a Heart” cocktail didn’t make much of a splash at all. It seems originate from, and really only appears in Patrick Gavin Duffy’s The Official Mixer’s Manual (1934). The quotation marks allude to it being the title of something, but of what is hard to say. Some say that it is after a film of t...

The product of a cocktail competition in London, the Golden Dawn is a boozy drink, almost entirely made up of Calvados, Brandy, and Gin. A newspaper article from 1930 mentions that cocktail purists were not happy with this drink winning the competition, simply because of the addition of fruit juice. We delve into the idea of what a cocktail is and isn’t, where the argument may have started, and wh...

Some say the Brandy Crusta is distinct enough to be considered an entirely different type of drink than a cocktail. Others say it is just a variation on or an evolution of a true cocktail. When it really comes down to it, having this kind of argument is just going to end up with you having a warm drink and a sad face. Going all the way back to the 1840s, this is one of the older drinks we have exp...

This was a fun episode.  The cocktail itself had a fairly ordinary background, so we made the most of it by disparaging passion fruit and spotlighting the UK Bartenders' Guild. The drink itself appears first (and only) in the Cafe Royal cocktail book which for the first time we discuss as part of the drinks compilation project the UK Bartenders' Guild took on in the 1930s. This drink is itself rem...

The Fred Collins Fiz on first glance would almost certainly be the sibling drink of Tom and John. This one is kind of a mystery though because the ingredients don’t really match any of the drinks in the Collins family, not even Grandma Rye, Aunt Bourbon, or wacky old Uncle Rum. So then it is a fizz then, right? Because of the fizz in the name? Except it seems to be missing the second “z.” And ther...

There isn’t a definitive explanation about how the Ford Cocktail got its name, so we get to do a whole lot of speculation on this cocktail. Dating back to at least 1895, it is a little too early to be named after the Henry of car fame. Luckily, there are so many other Ford options to choose from! Based on the timeframe, we explore Malcolm Webster Ford, a track and field athlete with daddy issues a...

I like a cocktail that tells you what it does for you. The Fogcutter lets you know right away, that this drink is going to clear away the cobwebs. How many cocktails can boast that it can make you less foggy? In this episode we take a look at this tropical drink that brings in the titans of tiki, Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber. This mid-20th century cocktail is generally attributed to Vic Berg...

The ingredients of The Flying Dutchman cocktail resemble a cold remedy, so I hope you like citrus! Or have a cold. This drink has orange gin, orange juice, lemon juice for extra Vitamin C, and a couple drops of Angostura bitters for color perhaps? Or digestion? Maybe just for fun? We don’t really know, because this cocktail is short on information about why and how it came to be. This one truly ma...

This Fish House Punch takes us to all the way back to colonial America and includes stories you probably didn’t learn in elementary school. This punch is truly a monster in a glass, or maybe a goblet, or bowl, or whatever people drank punch out of in the 18th century. Containing nearly all the booze and all the sugar, this surely guaranteed the founding fathers could stay up all night getting tras...

Something about a cocktail named The Filmograph sort of screams early 20th century technology. “Folks! Gather around and see the future of moving pictures. Just a dime will introduce you to the wonders of the Filmograph!” We aren’t exactly sure what a Filmograph was, but it must have been something because we now have a drink named after it. With a lack of references to the drink and some vague in...

If you do a quick search on the internet you will find any number of websites and blogs mentioning the Fairbank Cocktail, or more accurately, the Fairbanks Cocktail. You will also find that most confidently claim that the drink was named after actor Douglass Fairbanks. Occasionally, the voice of reason comes through and points to U.S. Vice President Charles Fairbanks as the origin for this drink....

The East India Cocktail was first noted by Harry Johnson who claimed in his book in 1882 that this was a popular drink in among the British in India. It was hard to find any truth behind this, but it certainly sounds imperialistic. As we dive into East India Cocktail we discuss the long European colonial presence in the East, corporate interests evolving into national interests, as well as mutinie...

Many cocktails got their start in the medicinal realm, and you can often see the transformations over time from cure-all to tasty beverage. So when a drink with a name like the Doctor Cocktail comes along, it is fair to assume that your aches and pains might be relieved from the ingredients. It does have citrus in it, so the Vitamin C might be warding off that pesky scurvy. Other than that, we don...

The Diki-Diki cocktail sounds just dirty enough to make the 12 year-old boy in you giggle. Grow up! This is a sophisticated podcast. Hee-hee, it sounds like dick. The ingredients are definitely not the usual suspects, featuring the infrequently used grapefruit juice, the Normandy-based apple brandy, Calvados, and finally Swedish Punsch, an arrack-based liqueur. Wait a minute. No gin? No whiskey? N...

So having done the Mint Julep, what more is there to say about derbies? We take a look at the Derby Cocktail which poses a few problems when trying to talk history about it. First, there are numerous recipes for Derby Cocktails, and none seem to be related to the others. Second, derby could be referring to any number of things like the Kentucky Derby, derby races, derby hats, Derby, England, or th...

The Delicious Sour. I like a cocktail that tells you all you need to know right in the name. Sours are a family of cocktail going back a long way, with notable features of putting a lime or lemon peel in the glass and an egg white. We also dive into the life of William “The Only William” Schmidt, a bartender who some call the “godfather of mixology.” Acrobatic bartending feats, cranking out on-the...

The Whiskey Sour is, er, well, whiskey with sour stuff in it. Sooo, good-bye? Just kidding, when there is nothing to talk about, we make something to talk about. This is another really, really old cocktail that is simple and has stayed relatively consistent with the ingredients until current day. It is definitely not the first sour out there, but it appears to have won the survival of the sour fit...

The Curacao Punch is generally attributed to Harry Johnson, and if you spell it the correct way of “Curacao” it is the earliest it shows up in a recipe book. However, if you spell it “Curacoa” then Jerry Thomas printed it first in his recipe book. I thought he might have just spelled it wrong, but mentions of “Curacoa Punch” show up in newspapers and books as early as the 1830s, and a recipe shows...

As we proceed with the forgotten cocktails, I’ve noticed that it’s more difficult to squeeze the interesting background out of them. Often it’s just a couple of words smashed together and attributed to a new recipe. In this episode’s cocktail it’s an attribution made in honor of a personality that I consider less than the cocktail inventor. The cocktail is named after the Italian-Sardinian general...

We are going to go out on a limb and say that the Communist Cocktail is probably named after Communists. Nothing states it definitively, but…Communist. This drink calls for Cherry Bounce in the original recipe, an old cordial made from sour cherries, the pits, sugar and spices. Cherry Bounce: the 19th century’s answer to Kool-Aid! It is a relative of Cherry Brandy, and Cherry Heering, used in most...

In this episode we take a look at the Brooklyn cocktail, which looks to be the product of Jack Grohusko from the early part of the 20th century. Most cocktails take some wondering and digging and guessing in order to figure out why a bartender gave it a particular name. With the Brooklyn, we go out on a limb here and say that it is probably named after the borough in New York. Sometimes it is not...

The Blue Paradise, like many cocktails with blue in the name, is not blue. The ingredients must be blue then, right? Nope, purple, red and brown and we can pretty much guarantee that the mixing of these colors do not make blue either. This non-blue drink is credited to a Belgian bartender by the name of Emil Bauwens, of Bar Saint-James in Brussels, showing up first in the cocktail book  Livre de C...

The Coffee Cocktail is unusual in that it does not contain any coffee in it, and if you go by the strict rules of what makes a cocktail, it isn’t that either. Jerry Thomas, who seems to be the first person to write the recipe down, calls it a “misnomer” because of the lack of coffee and bitters. He attributes the name to an appearance that sure looks a hell of a lot like coffee, and this seems to...

The Chatham Hotel Special is pretty mysterious because it is not altogether clear where the recipe for this cocktail even came from. We had a hard time even finding any mentions of this drink anywhere, so it made it a little difficult to discuss something that doesn't seem like it really exists. But that didn't stop us from talking about this cocktail that resembles a heavy dessert. There isn't a...