cocktail recipes

cocktail recipes were created—first in the form of spoken jingles or rhymes, later written down and published—to make mixed drinks reproducible. The earliest were approximate, as seen in the oldest punch recipes, such as “Two of sour, and one of sweet, / One of strong, and two of weak” from 1756.

By the time the first bartending manual, Jerry Thomas’s 1862 How to Mix Drinks, had appeared, certain conventions were beginning to evolve regarding consistency, documenting ingredients, measures, methods, and recipe formats. See Thomas, Jerry. Thomas, for example, preferred to list the ingredients with their quantities and then explain how they were to be assembled; others, such as Harry Johnson, preferred to diagram the process as it unfolded, working ingredients and instructions together. These approaches are both still in use. While early bar manuals attempted to be precise in their details, not every recipe included what are now considered essentials—details about ingredients such as “aromatic bitters” or “Jamaican rum,” preparation method, glassware, and garnish.

As the art of mixing drinks evolved, obsolescent measures such as the wineglass (2 ounces, or 60 ml) began to be replaced and vague ones to take on definition. Over time, American recipe writers moved to listing quantities in ounces, while British ones tended to prefer “parts.” (France and Spain, the other major producers of drink books, eventually followed British practice.) See cocktail proportions. Currently in the United States, recipes generally call for ingredients in quarter-ounce (7 ml) increments, and additionally, ingredients used in small amounts—the so-called drops and dashes—are now often given in fractions of a teaspoon (5 ml) as well. Throughout the rest of the world, metric measures allow more precise increments of 5 ml, with 30 ml—equivalent to about 1 ounce—being very common.

Two additional practices have emerged in modern cocktail books worldwide: listing the dominant alcoholic ingredient first and supplying headnotes that convey more detailed information about the drink. This information can include the drink’s inventor and other details of creation, the original cocktail from which it was adapted, and substitution recommendations. Today cocktail recipes don’t just narrate the making of the drink; they help the reader understand what makes it distinctive.

See also wineglass; cocktail proportions; and mixology (how to mix drinks).

Kaplan, David, Nick Fauchald, and Alex Day. Death & Co.: Modern Classic Cocktails. Berkeley: Ten Speed, 2014.

Masson, P. Le Parfait Limonadier: Ou le maniere de preparer le thé, le caffé, le chocolat, & autres liqueurs chaudes & froides. Paris: C. Moette, 1705.

Morgenthaler, Jeffrey. The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2014.

Terrington, William. Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks: A Collection of Recipes for “Cups” and Other Compounded Drinks, and of General Information on Beverages of All Kinds. London: G. Routledge, 1869.

“The Unforgettables.” International Bar Association website. http://iba-world.com/iba-cocktails/ (accessed February 25, 2021).

Wondrich, David. Imbibe!, rev. ed. New York: Perigee, 2015.

By: Dinah Sanders