Episode 71: Brandy Cobbler

• 3 ounces brandy or cognac

• 1/2 ounce simple syrup

• 1 to 2 ounces club soda, to taste

• Orange slices and seasonal berries, for garnish

Line an old-fashioned glass with orange slices and fill with crushed ice, Then pour in brandy and simple syrup. Stir to combine, and top with soda. Add the fruit & berry garnishes (skewered or piled on top of the ice).
Serve with a straw and enjoy.

Cobblers became popular toward the end of the 1830s, around the same time that the ice trade in the US was expanding, making it easier to create cocktails with loads of ice. Much like a julep, cobblers call for crushed ice and plenty of it.
In fact, no one is exactly certain where the name cobbler comes from, but according to David Wondrich, it may have something to do with the “cobbles” of ice the cocktail is built on.

Originally cobblers were always made with wine or fortified wine. The sherry cobbler was definitely the most popular variety, but in Jerry Thomas’ 1862 bartenders guide he also includes recipes for a Catawba wine cobbler, a claret cobbler, a Hock cobbler (British term for German white wine) and a sauterne cobbler.

But sometimes cobblers were made with stronger spirits. Jerry Thomas also included a whiskey cobbler recipe in his book, and according to David Wondrich, Brandy cobblers were also super popular in the 1850s, especially in New York.

Once you have crushed ice and sliced citrus, building a cobbler is very easy to do. The one thing to keep in mind though is that Jerry Thomas insists that special attention needs to be paid to how it’s presented. 

“The cobbler does not require much skill in compounding, but to make it acceptable to the eye, as well as to the palate, it is necessary to display some taste in ornamenting the glass after the beverage is made.” He even includes an illustration of how a cobbler should look.

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Episode 70: Between the Sheets

• 1 ounce cognac

• 1 ounce light rum

• 1 ounce Cointreau or triple sec

• 1/2 ounce lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake until frosty and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon or orange twist if desired

Harry MacElhone from Harry’s New York Bar is often given credit for inventing a whole slew of classic cocktails, like the French 75, the White Lady, the Old Pal, the Monkey Gland, The Bloody Mary, and the Sidecar just to name a few. But dig any further than the surface and it’s much more realistic to say his bar just popularized recipes rather than actually creating them.

The modern version of the Between the Sheets is basically just a twist on a classic sidecar. If you eliminate the sugar rim and add some white rum, boom, you have a between the sheets. Many older recipes actually call for gin rather than brandy though. Some cocktail historians believe that the true origin story of this cocktail is that it was invented in the United States sometime during prohibition as a gin-based cocktail, but that when Harry’s Bar heard about the recipe, they switched the gin for cognac to make it smoother and more elegant.

Either way, the cognac and rum based version from Harry’s bar is the one that really took off and became the iconic and classic Between the sheets that people know today.

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Episode 60: Stinger

• 2 ounces cognac or brandy

• 1/2 ounce white crème de menthe*

Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker and fill with ice; shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.**
Garnish with a fresh mint leaf.

* To avoid an unappetizing color, be sure to use the white (clear), rather than the green crème de menthe
** You can also pour it over shaved ice in an old fashioned glass, for an extra refreshing treat.

The Stinger seems to have originated sometime around 1890 and may have been a twist on another popular cocktail at the time called the Judge, which was made with brandy, crème de menthe, and simple syrup. It was immediately popular in New York City, and quickly became known as an upper class "society" drink, reportedly a favorite of Reginald Vanderbilt in the 1920s.

Strong, sweet, and minty, it makes a perfect after dinner night cap, and many people in high society saw the Stinger not as a cocktail, but rather a digestif, only to be served after dinner. Over time though, that changed, and people started drinking Stingers as a cocktail.

The Stinger remained popular during Prohibition because crème de menthe helped mask the flavor of the inferior-quality brandies that were available. It remained popular all through the 1960s, but eventually it begin to lose favor in the late 70s. Today many people have never even heard of it.

Stinger recipes can vary quite a bit in proportion, with some drinkers preferring a drier version made with less crème de menthe, and others preferring it sweeter. Stinger recipes also typically call for the drink to be shaken, which is a bit strange for cocktails made from all spirits. They’re usually served up in a small cocktail glass, but for an extra refreshing treat they can also be served over crushed ice like a julep.

Episode 44: Prescription Julep

• 1 tablespoon (1/2 oz) white sugar

• 1/2 oz water

• 5-6 mint leaves (plus more for garnish)

• 2 ounces cognac

• 1/2 ounce rye

• Garnish: mint sprig and fresh seasonal berries

Add sugar and water to the bottom of a rocks glass or julep cup and stir to start dissolving. Add 5 to 6 mint leaves and gently press with a muddler to release their oils (don’t over-crush them or they can get bitter).

Fill the glass with finely crushed ice and add cognac & rye. Stir to combine and top with more crushed ice to mound over top. Garnish with a bright green sprig of mint leaves, and if desired, a few fresh raspberries or blackberries. Serve with a straw.

The Prescription Julep was created in 1857, and according to cocktail historian David Wondrich, it’s one of the tastiest mint julep recipes he knows.

Rather than using the traditional bourbon whiskey, this julep recipe calls for a mix of cognac and rye whiskey. Wondrich says this combination is “a marriage made in heaven, the cognac mellowing the rye and the rye adding spice to the cognac.” While the used of Cognac & Rye may seem unusual, back in the Julep’s heyday in the mid 1800s, there were several variations, some even using gin or fortified wines like sherry or madeira.

This recipe came from a tongue-in-cheek medical joke made in 1857 in Harper’s Monthly, in a serial called “A Winter in the South”. In it, one doctor “Quackenboss” writes out a prescription, in Latin medical abbreviations, for this julep recipe. When translated into English, the prescription calls for white sugar, spring water, strong cognac, spirits of rye, mint leaves, and powdered ice.

At the bottom of the prescription, he adds a recommendation for dosage,
“Repeat dose three or four times a day until cold weather.”
“Quackenboss, M.D.”

Wondrich recommends using good, old cognac, since it’s the main base spirit, but says there’s no reason to splurge on the rye which is really just there to spice up the cognac. The original recipe doesn’t call for it, but he also recommends topping the prescription julep with some aged Jamaican rum and garnishing with a few fresh raspberries or blackberries.

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Episode 40: Fish House Punch

Lemon simple syrup

• ½ cup sugar

• ½ cup hot water

• Peels from 2 lemons (try to avoid white pith)  

Combine ingredients together in a heat safe jar. Cover and let sit for at least several hours before using.

Fish House Punch

• 2 oz brewed black tea, cooled

• 2 oz amber rum

• 1 oz cognac

• ¼ oz peach brandy

• ¾ oz lemon simple syrup

• ¾ oz lemon juice

• Garnish: Freshly grated nutmeg & a lemon wheel

Combine everything in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake just enough to combine, strain into a glass over ice. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg and a wheel of lemon.

Punch was almost always served at any festive occasions in Colonial America, and they were often made with rum and usually flavored with some kind of citrus. They were also often diluted with brewed tea to add more flavor that water.

 The Fish House Punch is probably one of the most famous punches in American History. According to David Wondrich, the Philadelphia Fish House Punch “deserves to be protected by law, taught in the schools, and made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July celebration.” It was invented at a private fishing and social club in Philadelphia called the State in Schuylkill Fishing Corporation, popularly known as the Fish House.

We don’t know exactly when it was created, but it was legendary for its flavor and potency. Rumor has it that George Washington even drank some in 1787. He wrote in his diary that he was going to dine at the Fish House Club as an honored guest, and after that his diary remained uncharacteristically blank for the next three days.

This would have been a very fancy drink at the time, because so many of the ingredients were imported. Jamaican rum, French cognac, peach brandy from the south, British black tea, and lemon and nutmeg which were also both quite expensive at the time.

Traditionally a large batch of this punch would be flavored with Oleo-saccharum, an infusion of lemon zest and sugar, but to scale this recipe down to a single serving, we went with a simple syrup infused with lemon peels.

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Episode 27: The Sidecar

• 2 ounces Cognac

• 1 ounce Cointreau or similar orange liqueur

• 1 ounce lemon juice

• orange twist or wedge (optional garnish)

Combine the cognac, cointreau, & lemon juice in a cocktail mixing glass or shaker. Add plenty of ice and stir until frosty cold. Strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass with a sugared rim (if desired) * see note.
Garnish with an orange twist or wedge.

*note: To rim the glass with sugar, dip the rim into a plate with a small amount of water, and then dip the wet rim into another plate with sugar. If you want to do half the rim, you can wipe the other half dry before dipping into the sugar. This allows the drinker to decided if and how much sugar they’d like.

The sidecar was wildly popular in the 1960s, but the recipe had been around for a good long time. In fact, the recipe actually evolved from a 19th century classic called the Brandy Crusta.

The Crusta was a huge deal when it came on the scene because it actually changed the entire idea of what people thought a cocktail could be. The original formula for a cocktail dictated that it should include strong spirits, water, sugar, & bitters. The Crusta however, used lemon juice instead of water, which was practically ground breaking at the time. It was also served in a sugar rimmed glass, which was also seen as an innovation.

When Jerry Thomas included the recipe for the Crusta in his cocktail book, their popularity skyrocketed. Over the years, the recipe evolved. Generations of bartenders put their own spins on it to make it their own, playing with the balance, ingredients, and presentation. Before you knew it, the recipe looked more like today’s Sidecar than yesterday’s Brandy Crusta.

The origins of the name of the sidecar are disputed, but it was likely invented around the end of World War II, either in Paris or London. The common belief is that it was named after an army captain who liked to ride to the bar in the sidecar of his motorcycle.

However, in The Essential Cocktail Dale DeGroff  wrote, “The word sidecar means something totally different in the world of the cocktail: if the bartender misses his mark on ingredient quantities so when he strains the drink into the serving glass there’s a bit left over in the shaker, he pours out that little extra into a shot glass on the side – that little glass is called a sidecar.”

As the Sidecar morphed from the Crusta, it was originally still made with brandy, but brandy can vary a lot in flavor depending on where and how it was made. Just like wine, Brandy can be sweet, fruity, dry, earthy, etc.
So, depending on the brandy used, bartenders would need to adjust the amounts of the other ingredients to ensure a balanced cocktail that wouldn’t be too sweet or too tart.
While Cognac is a type of brandy, the flavor from brand to brand tends to be much more steady, so eventually the brandy was swapped with cognac to ensure a more reliable, balanced final product.

A lot of sidecar recipes call for a sugared rim just like a Brandy Crusta, but some bartenders prefer to leave the sugar off. We’re not exactly certain if the sugar would have been popular in the 60s, so we decided to only coat half of the rim in sugar to give the drinker the option of choosing whether they want the sugar or not.

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Episode 22: National Guard Seventh Regiment Punch

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• 1 to 2 teaspoons sugar *see notes

• ½ oz lemon juice  

• 2 oz Brandy (preferably Cognac)

• 2 oz Catawba wine OR dry rosé wine **see notes

• 1 teaspoon raspberry syrup (recipe below)

• ¼ oz Jamaican rum (optional)

• Garnish: orange, pineapple, fresh berries 

Stir sugar and lemon juice together in a bar glass or rocks glass. 
Add brandy, wine, and raspberry syrup and fill the glass with ice (shaved or crushed preferable) 
Shake well and pour back into glass. 

Top with dark rum and garnish with fruit. Serve with a straw. 

NOTES:
* The original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons, but we found the cocktail far too sweet and much preferred it with only 1 teaspoon after some testing
** The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will be very similar, or you could use any sweet white or rosé wine you like. However, we found this punch was far too sweet and much preferred it made with a dry rosé instead.

Raspberry Syrup

• 2 cups of demerara sugar

• 1 cup of water

• 1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

Stir sugar and water over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Add raspberries stirring until the berries form a pulp. Strain into a jar and refrigerate. Over time, the pectin will rise to the surface and can be skimmed off.

The “National Guard Seventh Regiment Punch”  was probably around before the 1860s but we don’t know the actual origins. We just know that the recipe was published by Jerry Thomas in 1862.

This drink is named after NYC’s seventh regiment, which used to be the only regiment that made up the national guard at one point in history. They were known as a “silk stocking” regiment, meaning they were mostly made up of fancy fifth avenue blue blood types. 

During the civil war they were on their way to go fight at Gettysburg, but NYC’s draft riots broke out and they were called back. Fighting draft rioters in NYC was actually the only combat they ever saw during the entire civil war. 

This is one of the more unique cocktails we’ve ever had. The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will have a very similar flavor, but you could use any sweet white or rosé wine that you like. However, we found this punch to be far too sweet for modern tastes, and much preferred it when we tried a version made with a dry rosé instead. A later reprint of Thomas’ book called for Sherry. 

Catawba grapes are a hybrid of wild grapes native to the East Coast crossed with European wine grapes. Catawba wine can be a bit hard to find today, but 200 years ago it was everywhere in the US. In fact, Jerry Thomas’ book actually has several recipes that feature it. The flavor of Catawba wine is sweet and distinctly grape-y, tasting more like Concord grape juice than wine. Posh wine snobs refer to this flavor as “foxy” and say that it also has a wild, musky, animal smell, but we just tasted juice box.

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Episode 19: The Brandy Smash

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• 1 teaspoon superfine sugar

• 2 teaspoons water

• 2 small sprigs of mint

• 2 oz brandy

• Mint, orange, & berries for garnish (optional) 

Swirl sugar and water together in the bottom of a cocktail shaker.
Add mint, brandy, and ice, & shake vigorously until frosty.
Fill a rocks glass to the top with finely crushed ice and strain cocktail into the glass. Garnish with a sprig of mint, an orange slice, and fresh berries if in season.

The Brandy Smash is a classic cocktail that is so classic that it saw its heyday before the Civil War. Though it was likely created sometime in the 1830s, the 'smash' was at its peak in the 1850s, eclipsing even the Sherry Cobbler in popularity.

Made from mint, sugar, and strong spirits, the smash is often compared to the julep because they were both created around the same time, and while the methods are different, the flavor is really similar. Today they’re most often made with bourbon or rye whiskey, but in the mid 19th century they were usually made with brandy. Gin was also used sometimes.

The use of the cocktail shaker rather than a muddler is what sets the Julep and the Smash apart from one another. The cocktail shaker was a relatively new invention and it didn’t take long for bartenders to realize they could skip muddling and just shake the mint into the drink. Vigorous shaking smashes up the mint leaves, which is probably how the drink got its name. The Smash was also sometimes called a Smasher or a Smash-up.

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Episode 11: The Vieux Carré

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• 1 ounce rye whiskey

• 1 ounce cognac

• 1 ounce sweet vermouth

• 1 teaspoon Bénédictine

• 2 Dashes of Angostura bitters

• 2 Dashes of Peychaud’s bitters 

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass and fill with ice; stir well for 20 seconds and strain into an ice-filled Old Fashioned glass. Garnish with a cherry.

The Vieux Carré dates back to a famous hotel bar in the 1930s. It first appeared in print in 1937, in “Famous New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em”.

This cocktail is a New Orleans classic, and although the name is French, the pronunciation is pure Creole. Forget your French classes and how you think “vieux carré” should be pronounced. In New Orleans, it’s simply callled a “voo car-ray”.  In French the name means ‘Old Square’ or ‘Old Quarter’, which was the original name for the French Quarter in New Orleans.

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