The Blue Moon cocktail, a combination of gin and—well, nobody is quite sure—was one of the fashionable drinks of the 1910s and enjoyed a wide popularity. It entered the public eye as the house drink at Joel’s, the legendary theatrical and bohemian restaurant on West Forty-First Street in Manhattan. The drink’s startling blue color did nothing to hinder its notoriety. Going back as far as 1911, recipes for the drink abound, with very little agreement between them. The lack of consensus can be attributed to the fact that the original formula, as far as can be determined, was simply equal parts of gin and Crème Yvette, a deep blue American liqueur flavored with berries and violets. This yielded a drink that was fairly potent but sweet and unharmonious. There most common amendments were to add egg white to the drink or, much better, to cut the gin and liqueur with an equal part of dry vermouth. After a brief revival in the 1930s the drink quickly faded away. The revival of Crème Yvette in 2010 (it had suspended production in 1969) has not materially improved the Blue Moon’s fortunes.
Recipe: Shake 45 ml ea. London dry gin and Crème Yvette or crème de violette with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
McIntyre, Odd. “Big Town Stuff.” El Paso Herald, June 23, 1925, 9.
By: David Wondrich