The fix is an American class of drinks from the mid-nineteenth century with lemon juice, sugar, and spirits, served on ice with a fruit garnish. First appearing in print in 1841 in the form of a Gin Fix (always the most popular version), it is the earliest of the American variations on punch to be served in the “small bar glass,” the same glass in which the cocktail was originally served. See glassware. As such, it is the harbinger of the fusion between punch and the cocktail that would occur at the end of the nineteenth century.
Originally the only difference between a fix and a sour was that the sour lacked the fix’s fruit garnish (usually orange slices and berries). See sour. Indeed, many considered them the same drink. By the 1880s, however, the sour was customarily strained off the ice, thus creating one point of differentiation between the drinks. Another was the flavored syrup or liqueur that some mixologists at that time had begun using to sweeten their fixes. By then, however, the fix was on its way out: as a bar drink, it did not survive the nineteenth century, although it would pad out bartenders’ guides for decades beyond. The fix is one of the few nineteenth-century drink categories that has not profited from the modern cocktail revival, at least not by name: the Bramble, one of the undisputed modern classics, is in fact a fix in everything but name. See Bramble.
Recipe (Gin Fix): Stir 5 ml sugar with 15 ml lemon juice; add 60 ml genever, shake, and strain into ice-filled glass; garnish with half orange wheel and berries in season.
“A Meeting at Washington, between Fuller and a Whig from Michigan, One Week after the Election.” Detroit Free Press, November 25, 1841, 2.
Johnson, Harry. New and Improved Bartender’s Manual. New York: Harry Johnson, 1882.
Thomas, Jerry. How to Mix Drinks. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1862.
By: David Wondrich