382. York Cocktail

 My interpretation:
  2 oz Cocchi Vermouth di Torino
  0.5 oz fresh lime juice with expended peel

Fill mixing-glass with cracked ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This simple Vermouth Service first appears in JM1912. The next year, Straub offers his version of the York, a Scotch-Vermouth duo with orange bitters shaken (aka Rob Roy Cocktail). Oddly enough, Straub’s recipe is the one found in The Old Waldorf Bar Days (1931), which seems to point to this as the original. Craddock’s York Special, however, is 1.5 oz Vermouth, 0.5 oz maraschino, and 4 dashes of orange bitters. Despite them all, Jack sticks to his Vermouth+lime recipe till the end.

380. Yale Cocktail

 My interpretation:
  2 oz Bombay Sapphire London Dry gin
  1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters 
  1 dash St. George Absinthe Verte
  1 lemon peel

Fill mixing-glass with cracked ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, twist lemon peel, garnish, serve. — This recipe comes from Straub 1913. Craddock’s version in 1930 has orange bitters, Angostura, lemon peel, and a splash of soda. The Old Waldorf Bar Days, with this note:

calls for Tom Gin and Sweet Vermouth stirred and strained and finished with the seltzer. McElhone in 1927 calls for gin, orange bitters, Angostura bitters, lemon peel, and soda. Which drink best represents the institution in question is unsure.

378. Williams Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1.5 oz Tinkerman’s Sweet Spice Gin
  0.5 oz Martini & Rossi Rosso
  1 oz fresh orange juice 

Fill mixing-glass with broken ice, shake, strain into sufficiently sized glass or goblet, serve. — This sort of pre-Bronx Blossom / Harvester first appears in JM1910, where the gin is specified as “dry.” It remains a stable part of the JM tradition despite not being picked up by Straub or other manuals.

373. West India Cocktail

My interpretation:

  2 oz Martini & Rossi Extra Dry

  2 dashes Angostura Bitters

  2 lemon peels (for the shaker)

Fill mixing-glass with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This recipe is first found in Straub 1913; from there it makes its way to JM 1916. McElhone has a related West Indian Cocktail built in a tumbler with sugar, Angostura, gin, lemon juice, and ice. This stronger drink is reproduced by Craddock as well. Though featuring a different base, these drinks indicate that the West India was visually conceived, at least, as a lowball drink, and ought properly to be presented as such here. The Old Waldorf Bar Days recipe splits the difference, half Tom gin and half dry vermouth, with Angostura or (any other) West India bitters available; in which recipe no sugar is added, the Old Tom being sweeter already. This drink is stirred rather than shaken, and though not specifying the tumbler or lowball glass, this instruction may hint at as much.

372. Wedding Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Tinkerman’s Sweet Spice Gin
  0.25 oz Noilly Prat Extra Dry
  0.25 oz Martini & Rossi Rosso
  2 barspoons Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao
  1 oz fresh orange juice

Fill mixing-glass with cracked ice, shake, strain into a claret glass (a stemmed glass of about 5 oz capacity), and serve. —This cocktail as described in JM1933 is without precedent. However, McElhone and Craddock both mention a similar cocktail consisting of gin, orange juice, cherry brandy, and Dubonnet, called the Wedding Belle or Wedding Bells, of which this may theoretically represent a variant. In effect, it is a long Bronx sweetened by addition of curaçao and additional juice.

369. Watkins Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Tinkerman’s Gin (Sweet Spice)
  0.5 oz Cocchi Vermouth di Torino
  0.5 oz Martini & Rossi Extra Dry
  1 slice pineapple in mixing-glass
  1 slice orange in mixing-glass

Fill mixing-glass with cracked ice, shake, strain, serve. — This fruit-laced Perfect Martini recipe, first appearing in JM1912 bears a close resemblance to the later Straub’s Waldorf Queen[’s] (see above) added in 1916—which might stand out more if the Old Waldorf Bar Days recipe for the Waldorf Bronx (2:1 gin to orange juice, with 2 pineapple slices) had been followed.

360. Van Zandt Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Castle & Key London dry gin
  1 oz Martini & Rossi extra dry vermouth
  1 dash Rothman & Winter apricot liqueur

Fill mixing-glass with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This martini + apricot first appears in JM 1908 as a shaken drink, but is reproduced in Straub as a stirred one. Apparently a man named Van Zandt ordered them frequently enough to get them included in Grohusko’s repertoire. It is absent from other cocktail books.
  

356. U. C. Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Castle & Key London Dry Gin
  1 oz Martini & Rossi Extra Dry Vermouth
  1 dash St. George absinthe verte

Fill shaker with ice, shake about 30 strokes, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This shaken Martini+absinthe recipe first appears in Straub 1913 without a hint as to the source of the name.
 

355. Two-Spot Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao (uncolored)
  1 oz Martell VS Cognac

Fill shaker with ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, twist lemon peel, garnish, serve. — This Straub 1913 Duo with the unusual call for Curaçao Brun (not readily available here) has been modified in my preparation by the use of a Curaçao which necessarily presents a different flavor profile as well as color. In any event, the drink appears to be a local phenomenon in Straub and Grohusko which did not afterward gain traction.
 

344. Tiptop Cocktail

My intepretation:
  2 oz Martini & Rossi Dry Vermouth
  4 dashes DOM Benedictine
  3 dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters
  1 dash Angostura aromatic bitters

Shake with ice, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This light, vermouth-based drink appropriate for any time of day, first appears in print in Straub 1913, from which it is borrowed for JM1916. The drink probably originates with the Old Waldorf bar. The 1931 publication of the manual includes this recipe with the following differences: 2 dashes Angostura (not 1), no orange bitters, stirred (not shaken), lemon twist.

341. Swan Cocktail

My interpretation:
  2 oz Copper & Kings white absinthe
  1 oz fresh orange juice

Fill mixing-glass with broken ice, shake 20 seconds, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This breakfast bracer (or anytime bracer) duo first appears in JM1912. The next year, Straub listed a recipe by the same name but dissimilar in every other way. It is a dry martini with bitters and a dash of lime. The key here is that this other recipe is named for the brand name of Swan gin, a notable brand of genever from Schiedam, Netherlands. That recipe derives from the earlier Old Waldorf manual, which was published later in 1931 under the title the Old Waldorf Bar Days, which adds absinthe as well. Long story short, the Grohusko recipe is unique and unrelated, lending dignity to the name as descriptive of the drink itself, reflecting the beauty and elegance of that noble bird. The other simply plays upon a popular name for genever.

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.

 

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).

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.

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.

313. St. Peter Cocktail

My interpretation:
  2 oz Beefeater Dry Gin
  1 dash fresh lime juice
  1 dash gum syrup

Shake with ice 20 seconds, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — The third “saint” in Straub provides JM1916 and 1933 with this variation on a Gin Cocktail sans bitters, lime for lemon, sanding the edges of the dry gin very neatly. It might conversely be considered a sort of boozy, gin-forward Gimlet, easy on the additives (another drink in the Miscellaneous section, the Lime Kiln, forms the opposite pole, with a proportionally greater quotient of lime and syrup, of which two the Gimlet (not otherwise represented in JM) would represent the average.

311. St. Francis Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Plymouth Gin
  1 oz Noilly Prat Dry
  1 pimento-stuffed olive (pimola)

Fill shaker with ice, shake for 10 seconds, strain, drop in olive, serve. — First appearing in Straub 1913, this gin-based Duo with a fussy garnish was thence incorporated into JM1916. The instructions are slightly misleading are not original. Until 1933, there were no instructions. It does not appear that the pimola was intended to be shaken, but simply to be added as a garnish. This mixture is supposed to have been invented at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, and is one of the drinks to which the modern idea of the dry Martini is attributed.

310. Sabbath Cocktail

My interpretation:

  1 oz Rémy Martin VSOP

  1 oz Offley Tawny Port

  1 oz black coffee (Portland Brew / Summit Roasting)

  1/2 tsp sugar

Shake all ingredients with ice 20 seconds, strain out ice, shake a further 15 seconds, strain into claret (small wine) glass, serve. — This large format caffeinated flip first appears in Straub 1913 (spelled “Sabath”) from whence it makes its way into JM1916. It resembles an attempt at what the Coffee Cocktail ought to have been. In other books, like the Old Waldorf Bar Days (1931) it is called a Sabbath Calm. But Jack Grohusko already had a Sabbath Morning Calm going back to 1908, consisting of gin and eggwhite shaken and strained. That was relegated to the miscellaneous section in 1916; . The Old Waldorf recipe calls, properly, for a full pony of coffee rather than a half, but also adds a quantity of cream, which is unnecessary here.

 

308. Ruby Cocktail

  

My interpretation:
  1.75 oz Plymouth Gin
  0.25 oz Peychaud’s Bitters

Fill shaker with broken ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — In 1910, that name is spelt “Rubie.” (And Peychaud’s is spelt “Peychard’s”.) Dry gin is called for at first. Straub’s recipe by this name has grenadine, applejack, and dry gin. The Old Waldorf recipe is quite different, and more reminiscent of the Rose in French recipes: Dry vermouth, cherry brandy, acid phosphate, orange bitters, and maraschino. The present recipe is much drier but has similarly appropriate coloring.

 

303. Robinson Cocktail

My interpretation:
  1 oz Castle & Key Dry Gin
  0.75 oz Dubonnet Rouge
  0.25 oz fresh orange juice

Fill mixing-glass half-full with cracked ice, shake, strain into cocktail glass, serve. — This recipe, somewhere between a Bronx and a Martini, with Dubonnet for vermouth and orange juice for orange bitters, dates back to the original JM 1908. The mixture ends up somewhat similar to the newer Marble Hill, named for a district in New York but has a much better claim historically.