339. Strawberry Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.5 oz Martell Cognac VS
  0.5 oz homemade strawberry syrup
  1 dash Luxardo maraschino
  2 dashes Regan’s orange bitters

Fill mixing-glass with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This fruity, “improved” strawberry and brandy dessert duo is first found in Straub 1913 and is borrowed for JM1916. The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) features a large-format (6 serving) drink made with strawberries, orange juice, whisky, and ice. Closer is the Old Waldorf Bar Days (1931) recipe, which only differs by reduction of orange bitters by 1 dash.

 

338. Story Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Martell Cognac VS
  1 oz Gammel Dansk Bitter Dram

Frappé (shake vigorously 30 seconds with shaker full of crushed ice, or else use two cups full of fine ice, and turn the mixture back and forth between the cups until very chilled), strain into cocktail glass, serve. — Boonekamp bitters are the licorice-forward kind, of which the flagship brand is recognized as Underberg’s. Gammel Dansk, a newer bitter, is more punchy, perhaps, but has some similar qualities. In any event, this post-prandial duo goes back to the first edition, JM1908. It was also picked up by Straub in 1913.

337. Star Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Laird’s Applejack
  1 oz  Casa Mariol Vermut Negra
  3 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Fill mixing-glass half-full of ice, stir, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This Applejack Manhattan with a NOLA twist is included in JM 1908. The same recipe occurs in Straub alongside a Star Old Fashioned calling for sugar and other fancy extras. McElhone is more fussy, building a stronger drink in equal parts gin and calvados tinged with a tsp of grapefruit and a dash each of dry and sweet vermouth. He describes it as a popular drink at the Plaza Hotel, NY. Grohusko’s simpler, sweeter recipe is more nearly echoed in the Old Waldorf Bar Days book, using orange bitters instead of Peychaud’s.
 

336. Stanton Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Beefeater Gin
  1 oz Noilly Prat Dry
  2 dashes D.O.M. Benedictine

Fill mixing-glass with ice, stir, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This Dry Martini riff with Benedictine tinge first appears in JM1908, an apparent Grohusko original. Earlier instances of hte recipe specify dry gin, so the absence of a modifier here is not a hint at something less-than-dry, but probably a typo. Stanton is the name of a street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, not far from Baracca’s Eating-House / Jack’s bar.
 

335. Sphinx Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.25 oz Beefeater Dry Gin
  0.33 oz Dolin Dry
  0.33 oz Vermut Lustau

Fill mixing-glass with ice, stir, strain into cocktail glass, garnish with lemon peel or slice. — This perfect martini riff with thin lemon garnish first appears in Straub 1913 and is picked up in JM1916.

334. Spaulding Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.25 oz Beefeater Gin
  0.75 Dubonnet Rouge
  1 tsp The Famous Grouse blended Scotch

Fill shaker with fine ice, shake well (30 seconds), strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This sweet martini-riff with a tinge of smoky scotch first appears in Straub 1913 and is borrowed in JM1916.
 

333. South Africa Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Lustau Amontillado
   1 oz Beefeater Gin
  3 drops lime juice (1 barspoon)
  1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This balanced Martini-riff with lime juice as well as sherry in place of vermouth, is first found in JM 1916, borrowed from Straub 1913.

332. Soul Kiss Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Dubonnet Rouge
  0.5 oz Bulleit Rye
  0.5 oz Noilly Prat Dry
  0.5 oz fresh orange juice
  1/2 tsp sugar
  
Fill mixing-glass half-full with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, top up with soda, serve. — This mixture, named after a musical comedy, first appears in JM 1912 (3rd Edition) and resembles a perfect Manhattan with Dubonnet (originally Byrrh) replacing vermouth, and the addition of sugar, orange, and soda, suggesting a hybrid recipe, unless the fizz water indicates a long drink. Here, however, it seems to add only a slight fizz edge to the final service. A larger cocktail glass seems appropriate. The recipe is also found in Straub 1913 (as “Soul Kiss No. 2”) and in McElhone’s Barflies & Cocktails (1927). The drink by this name in the Waldorf Bar Days is a dry martini shaken with egg white. Of the two recipes by the name in the Savoy book (1930), the no. 2 is more similar, having rye whiskey instead of Italian vermouth (the other ingredients are all shared: Dubonnet, orange juice, and dry vermouth).

331. Soda Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 tsp sugar
  3 dashes Angostura Bitters
  5 oz San Pellegrino Limonata

Line glass with water, pour out, then add sugar and angostura, fill with ice, top up with limonata, garnish with 2 orange slices, stir, serve. —The Soda Cocktail was retained unchanged from 1908. Straub has a similar cocktail with powdered sugar and lemon peel, and only mentions lemon soda.
 

330. Society Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.25 oz Beefeater Gin
  0.75 oz Dolin Dry
  1 dash Jack Rudy Grenadine

Fill mixing-glass with broken ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This martini with a dash of grenadine first appears in Straub 1913 and is borrowed for JM 1916.
 

329. Smith Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Copper & Kings brandy
  1 oz Rothman & Winter apricot liqueur 
  1 tsp Hiram Walker crème de menthe (white)
  1 dash St. George absinthe verte (to finish)

Fill mixing-glass with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, add dash absinthe (with atomizer if desired), serve. — This brandy / apricot dessert Duo comes from Straub 1913 and is picked up by Jack Grohusko for JM1916. It is good, if rather indistinguishable from a number of brandy-based dessert drinks.

328. Smallwood Cocktail

My interpretation:
  0.5 oz Beefeater Gin
  0.5 oz Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
  0.5 oz Vermut Lustau
  0.5 oz Cherry Heering 

Fill mixing-glass with cracked ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — The origins of this perfect martini + cherry cordial are obscure. It appears only in JM1933 and nowhere in the earlier usual suspects. Whether named for the revolutionary general and governor of Maryland, or the vacationers’ hamlet in Bethel, New York, is unknown.
 

327. Slome Cocktail

My interpretation:
  0.75 oz Old Forester Signature / 100 pf
  0.75 oz Martell VS
  0.66 oz Dubonnet Rouge

Fill shaker half-full with fine ice, frappé / shake vigorously 20 seconds, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This fine Bourbon-Brandy Manhattan riff (with Dubonnet doing double-duty for vermouth and bitters) first surfaces in Straub 1913. The formula yields a nice foam that lingers for a couple minutes if undisturbed, or pleasantly tickles the lip of the anxious imbiber. One wonders if the name is a corruption of Salome, and if it was thus another cocktail in commemoration of that erstwhile famous play / operetta (though nothing in the recipe suggests the exoticism met by the other recipe with its celery leaves).
 

326. Sloe Gin Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.5 oz Plymouth Sloe Gin
  0.5 oz Noilly Prat & Co. Rouge

Fill mixing-glass with ice, stir, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This simple Duo that leans on the sloe gin and seemingly attempts to balance this with a smaller dose of sweet vermouth, first appears in JM1908. It is a simple aperitif for those who like sloe gin. Two other Sloe Gin Cocktails of note are Craddock’s and Crockett’s in the Savoy Cocktail Book and the Old Waldorf Bar Days respectively. The former turns Jack’s recipe into a Perfect by addition of dry vermouth, the latter reformulates it as 2:1 Sloe Gin and Plymouth Gin with orange bitters. This resembles Craddock’s Sloeberry cocktail, which adds Angostura and orange bitters to a glass of Sloe Gin.
 

325. Sir Walter Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Bacardì silver (Appleton Estate)
  1 oz Christian Brothers Sacred Bond (Copper & Kings Brandy)
  1 tsp fresh lemon juice
  1 tsp Pratt Standard grenadine (Jack Rudy grenadine)
  1 tsp Pierre Ferrand dry curaçao

Shake 30 seconds with ice, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — I tried this twice, once with white rum, once with Jamaican. Both were good, as may be expected from sweet-leaning a dual-liquor proto-tiki drink with a tart tinge. The peculiar wording betrays the quasi-punch recipe as a direct borrowing from McElhone’s Barflies & Cocktails (1927). It is also found in the Savoy Cocktail Book (1933) with a similar recipe.
 

324. Silver Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Beefeater Gin
  1 oz Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth
  2 dashes Regan’s orange bitters
  2 dashes Luxardo maraschino
  1 dash gum syrup
  1 dash Angostura bitters

Stir well (30 seconds) in mixing-glass half full of ice, strain into cocktail glass, squeeze lemon peel, garnish, serve. — This recipe is first found in JM1908 and continues without change to JM1933. Straub 1913 shows a simpler formula with sweet vermouth and no gum syrup. McElhone’s recipe in Barflies & Cocktails (1927), ascribing the authorship to Pat O’Brien of the Knickerbocker, uses dry vermouth, but instead of gum syrup calls for egg white and orgeat—for which Jack’s use of gum syrup would be a reasonable, if lackluster, substitute. The Savoy Cocktail Book simplifies on Jack’s recipe by dropping the Angostura and gum syrup, bringing it closer to an augmented dry Martini or Tuxedo. This idea is also reflected in the Old Waldorf Bar Days book, which calls for a Martini with maraschino, frappé.
   

323. Sidecar Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Copper & Kings brandy
  1 oz Cointreau
  3/4 T lime juice

In shaker with ice, add ingredients including half lime, shake well (30 seconds), strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This recipe from McElhone’s Barflies & Cocktails (1927) proved so popular, it had to be included in JM1933. There the recipe calls for equal thirds of cointreau (triple sec), cognac, and lemon juice, and is attributed to MacGarry of Buck’s Club, London. The Savoy (1930) Sidecar has twice the brandy but still lemon.
 

322. Shonnard Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.75 oz Beefeater Gin
  0.25 oz Noilly Prat Dry
  2 barspoons Vermut Lustau

Fill shaker with broken ice, shake, strain into whisky glass, serve. —This Martini riff (mostly dry—there is not enough sweet vermouth to call it a perfect Martini) served down first appears in JM1910 (AKA Second Edition), p. 75. The call for a whisky glass usually accompanies larger drinks or those served with a piece of ice, since a whisky glass was somewhat like a small juice glass and probably held about 6 ounces, or about twice as much as a cocktail glass, roughly the same as a claret glass though without the stem. It is possible, though unclear, that the drink was larger than 2 oz + dilution. Shonnard is in origin a Scottish surname, and is found both in Shonnard Terrace (the location of a Victorian chateau in Yonkers, New York) and in Civil War Major Frederic Shonnard of the 6th New York heavy artillery, whose daughter, Eugenie, became a proficient sculptor.

321. Sherry Cocktail

My interpretation:
  2 oz Lustau Amontillado Los Arcos
  2 dashes Fee Brothers Cardamom Bitters
  1 dash Luxardo maraschino

Stir with ice, strain into cocktail glass, squeeze lemon peel, garnish with cherry (and lemon). — Obviously I have departed from Jack’s recipe on the supposition that a Sherry Cocktail ought properly to have sherry, not port. Port would have improved this cocktail (as would a superior bitters). After several attempts, I settled on Port and Angostura bitters (Dr. Elmegirab would be good), though I thought the Bristol Cream Sherry was a good runner up. Something sweet of that kind must have been used originally. 

Clearly, this is a very old recipe, as the name, ingredients, and characteristic wording suggest (directions such as “stir up with a spoon” are found mostly in books predating Boothby). It already appears in JM1908. What is of interest here is when, precisely, the recipe was altered by Jack Grohusko. A cursory investigation of the Manuals reveals the answer to be 1910 (the Second Edition), when suddenly “port wine” appears. Was there a sherry shortage? Or did customers think the “sherry wine” of the earlier versions made it too sour or insipid? Straub, at any rate, retains the use of sherry in 1913, and substitutes orange bitters for the maraschino.

320. Sherman Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.25 oz William Wolf Rye
  0.75 oz Noilly Prat Rouge
  1 dash St. George absinthe

Fill mixing-glass half-full with broken ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This Manhattan riff with absinthe instead of bitters, perhaps named after the Civil War general, appears first in Straub; from thence it is taken into JM1916.

319. S. G. Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz William Wolf Rye
  1 oz fresh lemon juice
  2 T fresh orange juice
  1 tsp Jack Rudy grenadine

Shake well, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This classic punch-style recipe, too sweet for a Sour, too sour for a Blossom, is found in McElhone’s Barflies & Cocktails (1927) in an equal-thirds formulation, where it is described as being popular among the Scots Guards, hence the initials. The Savoy (1930) changes the rye to Canadian Club whisky (i.e., Canadian rye).

318. Schulke Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Beefeater London Dry Gin
  0.5 oz home-infused orange gin (Gin Lane 1751 Old Tom + orange peels)
  0.5 oz Plymouth Sloe Gin
  1 T lime juice

Fill mixing-glass with broken ice, stir, strain, serve. — This interesting Trio balanced with a little lime juice, comes off like a Savoy punch-style drink, though it makes its appearance much earlier in JM1910. The orange gin of the day was Booth’s. Today a number of options are starting to appear again, but home-infused orange gin may still be the best resort in many parts of the States.

317. Scheuer Cocktail

 My interpretation:
  1 oz Vermut Lustau
  1 oz Dubonnet Rouge

Fill mixing-glass with cracked ice, stir, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This simple, light, vermouthy Duo appetizer goes back to JM1908 and continues unchanged. In 1913, Straub includes the recipe (perhaps they both may be traced to the same source) with the probably wise addition of 1 dash Angostura Bitters, but the dash of Bitters is not incorporated by Grohusko in 1916 or 1933.

316. Savoy Tango Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Plymouth Gin
  1 oz Laird’s Applejack 

Shake 20 seconds, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This boozy Duo recipe (of course it takes two to “tango”), originally from the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930) is first borrowed for JM1933, but with the unfortunate typo which turns the original sloe gin into an unspecified kind of gin and makes a less palatable drink (esp. if you only have Applejack instead of the Bonded Apple Brandy), which is why we cannot suppose the alteration from sloe gin to gin to be purposeful (usually in JM1933, “gin” represents an older Tom gin, while dry gin and plymouth gin are specified by name).
 

The original Savoy cocktail is less boozy and more balanced: