Old Fashioned
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| This drink is designated as an IBA Official Cocktail |
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| Old Fashioned | |
| Type: | Cocktail |
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| Primary alcohol by volume: | |
| Served: | "On the rocks"; poured over ice |
| Standard drinkware: |
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| IBA specified ingredients†: |
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| Preparation: | Place sugar cube in old fashioned glass and saturate with bitter, as a dash of soda water. Muddle until dissolve. Fill the glass with ice cubes and add whisky. Garnish with orange slice, lemon twist and two maraschino cherries. |
The Old Fashioned is a cocktail, possibly the first drink to be called a cocktail. It is traditionally served in a short, round, 8-12 ounce tumbler-like glass, called an Old-Fashioned glass, named after the drink.
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[edit] History
The first known 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 York. In the May 13, 1806 issue, the paper's editor wrote that it was a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar. [1]
The first 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 Pepper family distillery is now known as Labrot & Graham.
[edit] Recipe
There is great contention on the proper way to make an Old Fashioned. Here is one recipe:
- 50 ml rye whiskey or Bourbon
- splash of simple syrup or 1 cube (3.6 g) sugar and just enough water to dissolve it
- 2 dashes bitters
- Old Fashioned glass
- Place sugar (or syrup), bitters, and water in old-fashioned glass
- Crush sugar if needed and coat glass
- Add 2-3 cubes ice and whiskey
- Garnish with twist
Most modern recipes top off an Old Fashioned cocktail with soda water. Purists decry this practice, and insist that soda water is never permitted in a true Old Fashioned cocktail. Many respected sources (e.g. Maker's Mark) list an Old Fashioned as containing soda water, forgoing the bitters altogether. In some areas, notably Wisconsin, brandy is substituted for whiskey.
Many bartenders add fruit, typically an orange slice, and muddle it with the sugar before adding the whiskey. This practice likely began during Prohibition as a means of covering the taste of poor alcohol.
An 1895 recipe specifies the following: Dissolve a small lump (about 3 grams) of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger (44 ml) whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass.
Alcoholic strength about 35 percent by volume.
See also List of cocktails.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Raising a glass to the cocktail", Newsday article by Sylvia Carter, May 17, 2006. Newsday archive; Highbeam archive. Relevant paragraph quoted at ArtHistoryInfo.com.
[edit] References
- "Renewing an Old Fashion" by Robert Hess at DrinkBoy.com, discusses the history of this cocktail in detail, specifically focusing on the issue of whether to add soda water to the cocktail or not.
- Thinking Bartender Dot Com - Old Fashioned Article
- "Nothing wrong with Old Fashioned values" Article from Issue 46 of Whisky Magazine, March 2005.
- "The brandy old-fashioned: Solving the mystery behind Wisconsin's real state drink" Article by Jerry Minnich from The Daily Page, Madison, Wisconsin newspaper
