Monday, November 19, 2018

238. Millionaire Cocktail


My interpretation:
  1.5 oz Rittenhouse Rye
  1 egg white
  1 tsp Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao
  2 dashes Jack Rudy Grenadine
  1 dash Regan’s Orange Bitters

Shake well (30 seconds) with cracked ice, strain into large (claret) glass, serve. — Note that while I usually humor JM when it calls unnecessarily for shaking, I could not here countenance the prospect of imbibing a drink in which the egg white is merely stirred. However, the stirring technique is specific all the way back to Straub 1913, from which it is reproduced in JM 1916. This must be an error. The same recipe in Barflies and Cocktails (1927) is indeed well shaken, where it is also attributed to the Ritz Hotel, London. The Savoy Cocktail Book has two Millionaire cocktails, neither of which we need concern ourselves with here. The only resemblance is that one of them has an egg white (well shaken, naturally).

There is, however, in the Jack’s Manual tradition a different, earlier “Millionaire’s” (with possessive) recipe going back to JM1910 and corroborated to some degree in the 1931 Old Waldorf Bar Book, where it is called “Millionaire” and described as a Martini with grenadine poured on top, in a glass. JM1910 is a little more complex but essentially the same drink: A 5:4:1 mix of dry gin, dry vermouth, and grenadine with juice of 1/2 lime, stirred. This drink was no doubt replaced by the richer but unrelated Ritz / Straub drink to avoid confusion. Pictured below is the result of that later recipe:

 

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Turning the Page

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