A flag garnish usually consists of a half slice of orange and a maraschino cherry pinned together with a toothpick and positioned on top of a sour cocktail, often a Collins or specialty cocktail. Extravagant fruit displays date back to the kitchens of Catherine de’ Medici, who brought haute cuisine to France in the 1500s, and American bartenders (as shown in Jerry Thomas’s seminal 1862 book, How to Mix Drinks) have long relied on “fruits of the season” to add visual appeal to their creations. The flag garnish, however, is of fairly recent vintage: while cherries and orange slices were among the popular garnishes for Old-Fashioneds and sours in the 1930s and 1940s, the pinned “flag” doesn’t migrate to the Collinses until the early 1950s; the name came a generation after that. See Thomas, Jeremiah P. “Jerry”.
The flag is still widely used in many bars, but less so among the more modern ones, where there is a growing movement toward featuring more exotic and culinary garnishes.
Lombardo, Erik. “Four Ways to Up Your Garnish Game.” Food 52, August 21, 2014. http://food52.com/blog/11146-4-ways-to-up-your-garnish-game (accessed February 8, 2021).
By: Dale DeGroff