The Aviation Cocktail , made with gin, lemon juice, maraschino liqueur, and, originally, crème de violette, is one of a handful of obscure old formulae revived by the early proponents of the twenty-first-century cocktail revolution and used as a sort of secret handshake of the movement. See forgotten classic. The original formula for the classic Aviation first appears in New York bartender Hugo Ensslin’s 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks, one of at least four different formulae with the same name circulating at the time (the earliest of them appears in print in 1911, when aviation was in its first infancy as a sport). See Ensslin, Hugo Richard.
As far as can be determined, Ensslin’s drink did not enjoy broad popularity before Prohibition. Its fortunes improved somewhat in the 1930s, chiefly due to its being one of the many drinks from Ensslin incorporated by both Harry Craddock and Patrick Gavin Duffy into their popular drink books at the time. See Duffy, Patrick Gavin, and Craddock, Harry Lawson. By the 1950s, however, it had sunk into obscurity. Craddock’s version, which omitted the crème de violette, was the one that was revived by Paul Harrington in his influential online column for
The 2003 rediscovery of Ensslin’s book and the subsequent reintroduction of crème de violette to the American market have worked to make the Aviation something of a shibboleth for the generational divide between the first wave of modern cocktail aficionados, who tend to follow Craddock’s formula, and the subsequent ones, who follow Ensslin’s.
Recipe: Shake 50 ml London dry gin, 15 ml lemon juice, 8 ml maraschino liqueur, and 5 ml crème de violette (opt.) with ice. Strain and serve.
Craddock, Harry. Savoy Cocktail Book. London: Constable, 1930.
Duffy, Patrick Gavin. Official Mixer’s Manual. New York: Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, 1933.
Ensslin, Hugo R. Recipes for Mixed Drinks. New York: Mud Puddle, 1916.
Harrington, Paul, and Laura Moorhead. Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century. New York: Viking, 1998.
By: David Wondrich