cocktail in modern parlance is a very loose term, often meaning nothing more specific than “a mixed drink containing alcohol,” or even one that doesn’t have alcohol but imitates the presentation of those that do. More narrowly, it is applied to a little pool of iced spirits, mixed with bits of this and that and poured into an elegant stemmed glass or over crystal crags of ice, that when first sipped gives one the feeling of bursting into full bloom (as the American humorist George Ade wrote in his 1902 play The Sultan of Sulu) “like a timid little flower kissed by the morning sunlight.” Of all the myriad classes of mixed drink, the cocktail maintains the most perfect balance between delight and efficacy, and that has made it an icon; a symbol for mixed drinks and what they can do to provide a measure of momentary solace for at least some of the difficulties of adult life.
The cocktail began as one specific drink: spirits (for the most part, Dutch-style gin) mixed with sugar, bitters, and water or ice. See Cock-Tail. The idea of combining spirits, sugar, and bitters was English, but the idea that such a beverage could be a pillar of drinking culture is pure American. Between its debut in the years after the American Revolution and the 1830s, when it became popular enough to become a symbol of the strange things Americans did with drinks, it changed very little. But that decade saw American drinking transformed with, for example, African American bartenders such as William Walker of Washington, DC, introducing the fancy “Hailstorm Julep” and New York City bartenders producing the Sherry Cobbler, both of which used unprecedented amounts of ice. See julep and cobbler.
Up to this point, the Cocktail (we’ll capitalize it, as it was not yet generic) was not iced. Ice was reserved for slow-sipping hot-weather coolers, not short drinks such as the Cocktail, which was meant to be slammed down first thing in the morning, with repeat doses applied if and as needed later in the day. By the 1840s, however, ice began to appear even there. The iced Cocktail is first mentioned in print in New York in 1840, and by 1843, when the New York Sunday Mercury defined a Cocktail as “compounded of brandy, sugar, absynthe, bitters, and ice,” it was a matter of course. Indeed, they even iced their Cocktails at the bar on the tugboat that pulled steamships into New York Harbor, as one British traveler found in 1844. By then, the other ingredients of the drink were changing, as the Sunday Mercury’s Cocktail demonstrates with its dash of “absynthe.” See Sazerac Cocktail. Dashes of curaçao or maraschino were being incorporated into the drink, and perhaps other things as well. In the fanciest saloons, the flashy, cocky young men behind the bar were mixing the drink by pouring it rapidly back and forth between glasses so that it looked like they were throwing it in an arc. See tossing. When they had finished, they strained it into a small wine or champagne glass and dropped a thin paring of lemon peel into the glass after rubbing it around the rim. If they weren’t doing that, they were replacing the gin or brandy that was customary with chilled French champagne. In other words, the Cocktail had arrived.
Up to this point, the julep had been the reigning monarch of American drinks—the one that leapt first to people’s lips, both physically and metaphorically. For the rest of the world, it still was. In the United States, however, the Cocktail was now king. In his groundbreaking Bar-Tender’s Guide, Jerry Thomas offered thirteen variations on the drink: plain ones, fancy ones, a champagne version, a “Japanese Cocktail,” and three versions of the Crusta, “an improvement on the Cocktail,” which Thomas attributed to Joseph Santini of New Orleans. See Crusta.
Unlike many other classes of American drink of the time—the Rover, the Blush, the Champarelle—the Cocktail in its new, sleek, and icy form worked its way into the permanent fabric of American life. Reasons for such things are never crystal clear, but perhaps it was because the Cocktail was, at root, an extremely simple drink that used no perishable ingredients. Perhaps it was also that whatever it is that a mixed drink can do, the Cocktail did it the most quickly and with the least amount of fuss.
It should be emphasized, however, that Cocktails and saloon drinking in general were confined to a subset of the male population. For many men, and most women, the Cocktail was a vulgar drink that was consumed by louche and outlandish men in disreputable circumstances. But the years after the American Civil War brought a great deal of change to the country, including a growing respectability for the saloon and drinkers of the Cocktail who were more settled and middle class than the raffish, sporty set that propped up the bar before the war. By the 1870s, in many of the major cities, the habit had even spread to “respectable” women, who could get served a Cocktail (or a julep, a glass of punch, whatever) in tea rooms, cafes, restaurants, the table-service back rooms of some saloons, and even at dress shops and hat makers, such as the milliner’s where, according to the Cincinnati Post, an order for “French lace, pointed” resulted in a Brandy Sling and “straw goods” in a Sherry Cobbler.
But now its new devotees and the increasing pace of technological change in urban life conspired to expose the Cocktail’s greatest weakness—which from another perspective also happened to be its greatest strength. The Cocktail was just too potent. One Cocktail—a full wineglass (60 ml) of spirits—was already a pretty stiff belt, but due to the custom of drinking in rounds, where acquaintances at the bar would take turns to pay for drinks (or roll dice for it), drinkers rarely stopped at one. One solution was the Vermouth Cocktail, first documented in 1868 at a New York luncheon for the Sorosis, the pioneering professional women’s club. But this was perhaps going too far in the other direction. By the beginning of the 1880s, the solution had been found, in the form of the Manhattan and the Martini and the Metropole, Cocktails that were divided equally between vermouth and whisky, gin, or brandy, respectively. See Manhattan Cocktail and Martini. These were, needless to say, very successful, and by the end of the century they had essentially killed off the plain Cocktail, except for the deliberately retro version served as the Old-Fashioned, and New Orleans’s stubborn Sazerac. See Old-Fashioned and Sazerac.
Ironically, it was only at this point that the true Cocktail took off outside the United States. American-style bars had been popular in Paris since the 1840s, but they mostly served American expatriates. In London, for the most part they struggled, although the American bar at the Criterion in Piccadilly had a certain longevity. See Criterion. With the exception of the Prince of Wales, the people who had the greatest influence over British mores had treated American drinks, and the Cocktail in particular, as curiosities. See Prince of Wales. The tipping point seems to have come when the upper crust of British society took to drinking at the little bar maintained in the fashionable resort of Monte Carlo by Ciro Capozzi (1855–1938), an Italian who might have worked for Jerry Thomas in New York and made a specialty of the simple Cocktail. See
By then, however, the very definition of the Cocktail was changing. It was two new drinks that made it happen: the Bronx and the Daiquiri, both of which contained citrus, something heretofore confined to sours, punches, and the like. See Bronx and Daiquiri. Once these became accepted as Cocktails, the drink came to assume its narrower modern definition, with its broader one following not long after: once “cocktail lounge” becomes an acceptable synonym for “bar,” as it did in the 1920s, “Cocktail” must be spelled “cocktail.” This allowed the cocktail category to encompass an even wider selection of drinks over the coming decades. See Cosmopolitan; Dawa; Last Word; Long Island Iced Tea; Margarita; Negroni; and Zombie.
The modern cocktail renaissance, in another irony, brought back every variety of old-school Cocktail except the original, spirits-sugar-bitters-up version. The Old-Fashioned reached dizzying heights of popularity, and the Sazerac got declared the state cocktail of Louisiana, but the just plain Cocktail is rarely ordered.
Recipe (Ciro Capozzi’s Cocktail, 1898): Combine in mixing glass full of cracked ice, 2 dashes aromatic bitters, ½ barspoon (4 ml) orange curaçao, scant ½ barspoon rich simple syrup (3 ml), and 60 ml genever, cognac, or straight American whisky (rye or bourbon). Stir well, strain into chilled cocktail glass, and twist lemon peel over the top.
Ade, George. The Sultan of Sulu. New York: R. H. Russell, 1903.
Cooke, Henry. “Notes of a Loiterer in New York.” Bentley’s Miscellany 16 (1844): 597.
“How to Prepare Real Cocktails.” New York Herald, April 27, 1898, 3.
“‘Straws’ and ‘Laces.’” Cincinnati Post, August 16, 1883, 2.
Wondrich, David. Imbibe!, 2
“Yankee Nectar, from the New York World.” St Louis Post-Dispatch, May 16, 1885, 10.
By: David Wondrich
Charles Mahoney of New York’s Hoffman House bar building a cocktail, beginning with the bitters, 1905. Source: Wondrich Collection.