The smash or smash-up is one of the families of American drinks recognized by Jerry Thomas in his pioneering 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide. Featuring spirits, sugar, mint, and ice, shaken together, it represents the adaptation of the already-venerable julep to a more go-ahead age. See julep. As such, this “Julep on a small plan” (as Thomas dubbed it) was, along with the cobbler, the iced cocktail, and the Knickerbocker, one of the standard-bearers of the new American school of drinking. See cobbler; cocktail; and Knickerbocker.
The smash’s origins are obscure, although some during its heyday considered it a southern drink. “Smasher,” an American slang term applied to anything exceptional, is first recorded applied to a drink in New Orleans in 1842. See Daisy. It is not clear, however, if that mention denotes a specific formula or is merely an allusion to the effect of a generous drink of spirits, or, if indeed it is a specific formula, what that formula is. To further confuse matters, that same year, a traveler in Arkansas writes of a request for a smasher being answered with a “glass bottle of the ‘stuff,’ containing several descriptions of roots,” which implies a dose of bitters and not the classic smash. See bitters.
In 1843, however, there is a “smasher” included on the famous and influential drinks list at Peter Bent Brigham’s Oyster Saloon in Boston, which indicates a mixed drink with a specific formula. See Brigham, Peter. An 1848 description of the “cool depths” of a “Brandy Smash” (“smash” had begun replacing “smasher” in the middle of that decade), “clinking with young hail-stones, and an 1849 reference to “fresh mint” as the sine qua non for the drink indicate that it had begun to fall in harmony with the drink as defined by Thomas.
The 1850s were the decade of the smash in general, and in particular the Brandy Smash, far and away the most popular version (it was followed distantly by the Gin Smash and the Whisky Smash). It was the drink of checkered-trousered Broadway swells, of miners laden with gold dust from the “diggings” of California, of gamblers and artists and politicians. Wherever there were sporty Americans, mint, and ice, there were smashes. By the 1860s, however, for whatever reason the smash began fading (perhaps it was too fussy for a short drink). It would live on in bartender’s guides, thanks to its prominence in Thomas’s book, but one hears more and more infrequently of them being actually served across the bar, and then usually to older drinkers. By 1900, the drink was effectively dead and did not share in the brief renaissance that followed Repeal. In the modern age, it was fortunate to find an advocate in Dale DeGroff, whose Whisky Peach Smash, although not canonical (it contains lemon juice and peach slices), nonetheless begat its own line of modern smashes, which show no sign of dying out. See DeGroff, Dale.
Recipe: Shake gently with ice: 5–6 mint leaves, 15 ml simple syrup, and 60 ml brandy, genever, or American whisky. Strain into Old-Fashioned glass full of cracked ice and garnish with mint sprigs and berries.
See also Brandy Smash and Whisky Smash.
“Going into Liquidation.” Madison (WI) Express, April 2, 1842, 4.
“Meeting of the Police Club.” National Police Gazette, April 14, 1849, 3.
“Scraps from Old Nick.” Cleveland Weekly Plain Dealer, October 25, 1848, 3.
By: David Wondrich