Singapore Sling

As I assembled the laundry list of ingredients to make the Singapore Sling on my counter, I realized that I've been preparing you for this cocktail. I've written about gin, introduced Cherry Heering and Benedictine, and told you how to make real grenadine. Add some pineapple juice, lime, and bitters, and you have a Singapore Sling.

Since I'm making this cocktail for the first time, I chose to go with the recipe served at the cocktail's birthplace, the Raffles Hotel. As you'll find out below, the Raffles recipe is almost certainly not the original, which probably didn't contain pineapple juice. I think nixing the pineapple would make for a much better cocktail, but you could argue that today such a drink wouldn't be considered a Singapore Sling anymore.

In its current form, the Singapore Sling is a tropical drink through and through. It's the sort of thing you'd feel much better sipping on a beach than in your own home. I don't really see myself fixing one on a regular basis. I prefer my drinks, even my tiki drinks, a bit more spirit-forward. But it was really fun to make, and I'm glad it's now in my repertoire. I might experiment with a more classic gin sling recipe that doesn't use the pineapple. But this recipe would be a fun option for a party, and would be easy to make big batches of.

History: Classically, it's believed that the Singapore Sling was invented in (you guessed it) Singapore, at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel, by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon sometime around 1915. But, as usual, this is probably not true.

The first mention of a "sling" in Singapore comes from 1897, and people were already drinking cocktails that were very similar to the Singapore Sling between then and the date of its supposed invention in 1915. They were usually just called gin slings. Travelers wrote about drinking gin slings at the Raffles post-1915, but those who included a recipe make no mention of pineapple juice, which makes up most of the drink today. For example, in his 1922 Cocktails and How to Mix Them, Robert Vermiere provides what is considered the earliest recipe for a Singapore Sling (called a Straits Sling), and it's only gin, Benedictine, cherry brandy, lemon, bitters, and club soda.  So where did the story - and all that pineapple juice - come from?

The Raffles Hotel

Well, the Raffles wasn't doing well in the 1970's, and its new manager decided to try and harken back to its glory days by reviving its colonial-era feel. Part of this was resurrecting the Singapore Sling. The original recipe had been lost, but something close was supposedly pieced together from old menus, the memories of the bartenders, and a recipe scrawled on the back of a receipt from 1936 that may or may not exist. That something is the recipe below. Cocktail historians agree that it sounds much more like a recipe from the 1970's invented to sell cocktails than a classic sipped by Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling the 1910's.

In the midst of this cocktail resurrection, one of the bartenders, Ngiam Dee Suan, claimed that it had been his uncle Ngiam Tong Boon who had invented the Singapore Sling. This is the first mention of Ngian Tong Boon in connection to the drink, so there's not really any hard evidence that he invented it, especially given the popularity of gin slings in Singapore before 1915. But the Raffles jumped on the possibility, and now claims that they have Ngiam Tong Boon's recipe books and his original Singapore Sling recipe locked away in their safe, quite an impressive bluff.

For more details on the Singapore Sling, check out these pieces by David Wondrich, Worldfoodist, and George Sinclair.

Our Raffles postcard, currently part of a gallery wall in our apartment.

GarnishGuy and I went to Singapore in 2008 and got to wander around the Raffles a bit. It was absolutely gorgeous. It's impossible not to be enchanted by the sparkling white architecture, lush gardens, and Sikh doormen in impeccable uniforms. The hotel opened in 1887, and is named for Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who negotiated the founding of the first British trade post on Singapore.

Knowing that the Raffles was the birthplace of the Singapore Sling, I really wanted to try one there, but they're about $28. Today it doesn't seem like much for the experience, but back then it seemed crazy. In the more expensive countries we visited (Singapore included), we were staying in hostels and living off spaghetti. We'd also just come from Malaysian Borneo, where you could get a huge plate of mee goreng for next to nothing, so we weren't about to shell out $60 on cocktails. We bought a postcard instead.

Singapore Sling

1 oz. gin
1/2 oz. Cherry Heering
1/4 oz. Benedictine
1/4 oz. Cointreau
4 oz. pineapple juice
1/2 oz. lime juice
1/3 oz. grenadine
1 dash Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake well; you want a nice froth on the top from the pineapple juice. Strain into a tall glass filled with ice. Garnish with a pineapple slice and a cherry.

Recipe from the Raffles Long Bar via Viet World Kitchen.