Hurricane

If you've visited New Orleans, you're probably familiar with a cocktail called the Hurricane. Famously served at Pat O'Brien's in the French Quarter, the drink is recognizable by its distinctive glass and technicolor shade of bright red. As a tourist, you might be tempted to lump the it with the other not-so-great cocktails that are readily poured into plastic go-cups for consumption on Bourbon Street. But the Hurricane has a far more respectable history than a Hand Grenade or frozen Daiquiri. And, made correctly, it tastes much better as well. Since Mardi Gras is this week, I thought it was the perfect time to introduce this classic New Orleans drink.

A mixture of rum (a lot of rum), syrup, and fruit juice, the Hurricane is sometimes included in the category of Tiki cocktails. This isn't technically accurate, as Tiki is a very specific movement inspired by Polynesia, and the Hurricane has its roots firmly in New Orleans. But it's definitely an example of convergent evolution in the cocktail world, and you very well might find the Hurricane on a Tiki menu. It fits right in.

So why aren't my Hurricanes that recognizable shade of bright red? Well, not to knock Pat O's - which is totally worth a visit if you're in town - but the Hurricanes served there today are made from an artificial, sugary mix. Which I guess is good news if you want to make yourself a genuine Pat O'Brien's Hurricane at home. But if you're less interested in the nostalgia of your trip to New Orleans and more interested in having a tasty rum cocktail, then you should make your Hurricane from scratch. If you do that, the only bright red ingredient that might be going in is grenadine, and probably just a dash. Your Hurricane should come out closer to the pale orange pictured here.

The original Hurricane was made with three ingredients: gold rum, lemon juice, and a fruit syrup called Fassionola. Since Fassionola hasn't been available for years, most recipes substitute passionfruit syrup. But a bit more goes into Fassionola than just passionfruit: it's a complicated mix of seven tropical juices, dried hibiscus, citric acid, and sugar. Recently Cocktail & Sons came out with a bottled version so you can finally make a genuine Hurricane again. You can also try making your own if you're up for it. I, personally, was not, and Cocktail & Sons is currently sold out, so I used homemade passionfruit syrup.

Perhaps the Fassionola would have given these cocktails the extra bit of complexity they needed, but I wasn't happy with my three-ingredient Hurricanes - I found them a little too tart, a little too simple, and not very reminiscent of the "real thing" from Pat O's. So I started hunting for alternative recipes. There are a lot of them out there. I settled on a variation of Liquor.com's version, which has a little orange juice and grenadine, and uses lime instead of lemon. Perhaps this isn't the "original" Hurricane, but it's the one I like best. Happy Mardi Gras!

History: Pat O'Brien's began its life as a speakeasy during Prohibition. (Supposedly the password to get in was "storm's brewin'.") Once Prohibition ended in December of 1933, it opened legally as Mr. O'Brien's Club Tipperary on the corner of Royal and St. Peter Streets in the French Quarter. In 1942 it moved to its current location on St. Peter.

During World War II, it was difficult for bar owners to get their hands on whiskey, which is what people wanted to drink. Distributors started requiring bars to purchase a certain amount of abundant, easily-obtainable rum for every bottle of whiskey. So Mr. O'Brien found himself with a lot of extra rum lying around and needed a way to convince people to drink it. Thus the Hurricane was born. The actual recipe may have been created by the head bartender at Pat O's, Louis Culligan. The signature glass the drink was served in, shaped like the glass of a hurricane lantern, helped to increase its popularity.

The original hurricane recipe, published by Culligan in Cabaret magazine in 1956, is a simple one: 4 oz. gold rum, 2 oz. lemon juice, and 2 oz. Fassionola.

Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans

Hurricane

2 oz. aged rum
2 oz. white rum
1 oz. lime juice
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. passionfruit syrup*
1 tsp. grenadine

Shake with ice until chilled and strain into a Hurricane glass filled with ice. Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.

*I used the recipe for passionfruit syrup from Smuggler's Cove. First make a 2:1 simple syrup by mixing 2 parts sugar with 1 part water in a saucepan and simmering it until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool completely. Then combine equal parts syrup and passionfruit puree. The best place to find this is your grocery's freezer aisle. Hispanic food stores are also more likely to carry it.

Recipe adapted from Liquor.com. History from Distiller Blog and Wikipedia.

El Presidente

The El Presidente is a surprising drink. It might look something like a dry Martini, but one sip and you'll see that it has more in common with a Daiquiri or Mai Tai. It's rum-based, sweet, and citrusy, a spirit-forward Caribbean cocktail that's probably quite different from anything you've had.

If you've never heard of the El Presidente, don't feel bad. It's a cocktail that was set up for failure. Dating back to Cuba in the 1910's, it enjoyed incredible popularity for a while. But post-prohibition, that popularity plummeted. And that's probably has a lot to do with its ingredients.

First, there's rum, which was not a popular base spirit in the post-prohibition 20th century (outside of Tiki bars, at least). Then there's vermouth, which a lot of people didn't know how to store properly, leading to requests for ultra-dry martinis. Not to mention that most bartenders were using the wrong vermouth in this cocktail, as you'll see below. And then there's grenadine and orange curaçao. Used in their proper amounts, they round the El Presidente out beautifully. But if you do a Google image search for "El Presidente cocktail," the drinks you see will not look like the one I made - they are all either bright red or vivid orange, victims of the temptation to just pour in more sugar to salvage a sub-par drink.

Luckily for the El Presidente, rum is back in vogue, and so are the old classics. The recipe has been resurrected in its original glory, and it's definitely one worth making.

History:  Like the legendary Daiquiri, the El Presidente hails from Havana, Cuba. Some accounts indicate that the El Presidente's exact origins are uncertain, while others (like this thorough overview at Tasting Table) are pretty confident about their facts. According to them, it was invented sometime in the 1910's and named after Mario García Menocal, the president of Cuba at the time. In 1919, an American bartender named Eddie Woelke moved to Havana to run the bar at the Sevilla Biltmore Hotel. He took an interest in the recipe, tweaking it a bit and popularizing it from his bar.

Apparently Menocal's successor, Gerardo Machado, was quite jealous of Menocal's signature cocktail and asked for his own. A few dashes of orange curaçao were added to the El Presidente, and the Presidente Machado was created. In the 1930's, Cuban bartender Constante Ribalaigua Vert combined the two presidential recipes at the famous El Florida in Havana, using curaçao but dyeing it red to look like grenadine. Today you see recipes called El Presidente with one or the other, or both.

Once Prohibition was lifted, the El Presidente made its way to the States, but something was lost in translation. The recipe called for French vermouth, which usually means dry vermouth. But when bartenders made the cocktail this way, it was decidedly lackluster (probably leading to those heavy pours of orange curaçao and grenadine). After some digging, cocktail historian David Wondrich discovered that the vermouth used in the original recipe came from Chambéry in France, which is historically famous for making blanc vermouth - a sweeter, richer white vermouth. This discovery, along with a resurgence of interest in classic cocktails and ingredients, has allowed the El Presidente to gain the popularity it has always deserved.

El Presidente

1 1/2 oz. white rum (Bully Boy)
1 1/2 oz. blanc vermouth (Dolin)
1 tsp. orange curaçao (Ferrand)
1/2 tsp. grenadine (Stirrings)

Combine all ingredients in a mixing glass with ice and stir until chilled. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with an orange twist.

Recipe adapted from Imbibe.

Pink Lady

It's Valentine's Day again, and you know what that means: it's time for red and pink cocktails. Just about every cocktail site I can find has some sort of round-up of romantic drinks in these hues this week. And luckily for those who will be making and drinking them, it's much easier to make a decent red or pink cocktail than one of any other color (except maybe brown). There are tons of fantastic ingredients that will lend a reddish hue to your drink: Campari, Aperol, Peychaud's bitters, grenadine, blood orange, raspberry... the list goes on. Other holidays - say, St. Patrick's Day, for instance - don't have this advantage. So I'm hopping on board and featuring one of the most classic pink cocktails of all time: the Pink Lady.

The Pink Lady has gotten something of a bad rap over the years, for reasons that I'll explain below. You might look at it and think it's a creamy, saccharine concoction, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually not sweet at all, but quite tart. Egg white gives it a silky mouthfeel and a beautiful layer of foam. Grenadine lightly sweetens it and gives the drink its lovely pink hue. This is respectable classic, held back by its color and its name. But Valentine's Day is clearly the Pink Lady's time to shine.

About that egg white: I know it might be making you nervous. I used to avoid cocktails made with egg whites like the plague. I thought they gave drinks a bit of an odor that really turned me off. But if you use fresh egg whites and - I think this is key - not too much egg white, it should only impart texture to your drink, not flavor or scent. Most recipes call for a single egg white, but eggs have gotten much larger since pre-Prohibition cocktails like the Pink Lady were created. Half of a modern-day egg white is plenty.

Since I got over my aversion to egg white cocktails, another hurdle prevented me from making them: I could never quite get that lovely layer of foam. I'm still not sure how some people seem to do it so effortlessly. For me it took every trick in the book, but eventually I found a technique that seems to work pretty consistently. And you can do it too! See below for my tips.

History: The origin of the Pink Lady seems to have been truly and entirely forgotten. If you know otherwise, please comment and set me straight. But I can't find any real history on it. It seems clear that it was around before Prohibition, and that it's probably related to the Clover Club, another pink gin drink with egg white that uses raspberry syrup instead of grenadine and omits the Applejack. But that's about it.

The period of the Pink Lady's history that is well known is its post-Prohibition reputation as the first "girly" drink. Even though it's actually fairly strong and not that sweet, its delicate hue and ladylike name made it the stereotypical drink of girls who didn't really drink - they'd order one because it looked or sounded nice. In his 1951 The Bartender Book, Jack Townsend wrote that the woman who drinks a Pink Lady is "that nice little girl who works in files, who's always courteous but always seems so timid. She's the one who sort of reminds you of your aunt, the quiet one." He describes how she only drinks once or twice a year, and selects the Pink Lady because "she has seen the decorative and innocuous-appearing pink-and-white amalgamation passing on a waiter's tray and decided, 'Hmmm, that couldn't do me any harm.'"

Putting aside the unsurprisingly chauvinistic description of the "nice little girl," I have to say I feel immediate sympathy for the Pink Lady drinkers of the 1950's. Before I knew anything about cocktails, I was pretty intimidated by ordering at a bar. I would definitely select something with an appealing name, or point at the pretty drink the bartender was making for someone else and say I wanted one of those. I imagine we all have. So I say there's no shame in drinking a Pink Lady.

Still, Townsend's description cemented the Pink Lady's reputation as a girly drink for girls who don't drink, and this led to a definite decline in popularity. I imagine that the inclusion of grenadine and egg white, two ingredients that are so easy to get wrong, did not help. These days the Pink Lady can be found on cocktail menus once again, and finally commands a bit of the respect that she deserves.

Pink Lady

1 1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. applejack
3/4 oz. lemon juice
1/2 egg white (1/2 - 3/4 oz.)
2 dashes (1/4 tsp.) grenadine

Basic instructions: combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake very well. Strain into a coupe glass and garnish with edible flowers or a brandied cherry.

To really master that foam: I've had the best success with the "reverse dry shake" method. A dry shake is when you shake the cocktail without ice first. However, when you do this with a warm cocktail, I often find that the shaker doesn't make a nice seal and tends to leak, and the foam doesn't form as well during that second shake with ice. So for a reverse dry shake, combine all your ingredients in a shaker with ice (I like a Boston shaker rather than a cobbler shaker, as there's more distance for everything to go with each shake) and shake very well until it's chilled. Then strain the cocktail and dump the ice. You'll probably see some foam, but nothing close to the perfect, frothy layer you're aiming for. So return the cocktail to the shaker and do another, longer round of shaking without the ice. For best results, throw in a blender ball or spring to help whip the egg. (I literally use one of these.) Shake it for at least 60 seconds. And I mean count with full Mississippis - 60 seconds is longer than you think, especially when your arms are getting tired. Strain into a coupe glass, open pouring the last bit to get the final, thick drops of foam.

Recipe adapted from Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails.

Zombie

Today's #TikiTheSnowAway cocktail is another classic, perhaps second only to the Mai Tai in popularity: the Zombie. I have to say, this cocktail had somewhat negative connotations in my head before I saw the recipe. The name immediately conjured images of sugary cocktails laced with blue curaçao. And for decades, if you ordered a Zombie at a bar, this is probably what you'd get. As I mentioned in my brief history of Tiki, Donn Beach kept his recipes carefully secret, to the point of using unmarked bottles and mysterious numbered mixtures simply labeled "Spices" or "Dashes." This, combined with the ubiquity of cheap, artificial mixtures in the second half of the 20th century, meant that any Zombie you would order at a Tiki bar would likely be a far cry from Donn's original.

Thankfully, Jeff "Beachbum" Berry is here to save the day again. He managed to find the original recipe, eventually piecing together that "Spices #4" referred to cinnamon syrup. The true Zombie was brought back from the dead, as it were.

If you look at the recipe below, you'll see that it contains quite a lot of rum. If you thought the Navy Grog was strong, you should not go anywhere near a  Zombie. I swear I'm not trying to pick the most alcoholic Tiki recipes - these are the classics! But the Zombie is so strong that the menu at Don the Beachcomber informed patrons that there was a two-per-person limit, "for your own safety." As you can imagine, this just made the drink even more popular.

And its popularity is well-deserved. It's surprisingly good considering it's mostly rum. Or maybe that shouldn't be a surprise. The little bit of grapefruit juice does quite a lot, and the two dashes of Herbstura (Don's 1:1 mixture of Herbsaint and Angostura bitters) really adds some nice spice and herbal notes and brings it all together. It's a shockingly sophisticated cocktail.

But you probably should limit yourself to two, just in case.

History: Donn Beach invented the Zombie at Don the Beachcomber in 1934. The popular story is that a hungover businessman asked Donn to make him something to get him through a meeting, and Donn hastily mixed something up. Afterwards, the fellow told Donn that the drink made him feel like a zombie. However, the menu at Don the Beachcomber claimed, much to the contrary, that the cocktail was the result of months of careful experimentation on Donn's part.

Zombie

1 1/2 oz. blended aged rum*
1 1/2 oz. column still aged rum*
1 oz. black blended overproof rum*
1/2 oz. Velvet Falernum
3/4 oz. lime juice
1/4 oz. grapefruit juice
1/4 oz. cinnamon syrup**
1 tsp. grenadine
1 dash Herbsaint
1 dash Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker tin with 12 oz. of crushed ice and a few large "agitator" cubes. Shake well or flash blend and open pour into a Zombie or Collins glass. Garnish with a mint sprig; I added a cinnamon stick and some appropriate sineage.

*I recommend checking out Smuggler's Cove for more info on how these rums differ and what brands to buy. I personally don't have a column still aged rum or a black blended overproof rum; I used Appleton Estate Signature Blend (actually a blended column still/pot still rum) and Gosling's Black Seal (which is not overproof). Plantation 5-Year was my blended aged rum. If you don't have a giant rum collection, use what you have - I think you'll still enjoy the cocktail quite a bit!

**For cinnamon syrup, combine 1/2 cup water and 2 cinnamon sticks in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Add 1 cup sugar and stir to dissolve. Remove from heat and let sit for 12 hours. Then strain out the cinnamon sticks.

Recipe from Don the Beachcomber, adapted by Smuggler's Cove.

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.

Ward Eight

Before we get to the Ward Eight, check out the Mixology Monday roundup over at Putney Farm. It was fun to see what everyone made with their "hometown hooch." Boston was well-represented. Fred Yarm of Cocktail Virgin Slut made use of Bully Boy's Hub Punch, a fruit and rum concoction based on a historical recipe, for the Hubba Hubba. And Drink Something Completely Different went for Bully Boy Boston Rum and St. Elder in the Old Boys' Club, which sounds right up my alley. It's high time I sprang for a bottle of Green Chartreuse.

Since we're talking about Boston booze, it's appropriate that today's cocktail is the Ward Eight, as you'll soon see.

The Ward Eight may be pink, but it doesn't taste like it. As I was making it, I realized that this recipe is really just a riff on an Old Fashioned. Rye, bitters, sugar, orange. Using a half ounce of orange juice instead of just lightly muddling an orange slice amps up the orange flavor, and replacing simple syrup with grenadine adds a tartness that is enhanced by the addition of the unexpected ingredient, lemon juice. The lemon juice really makes it more of an Old Fashioned-Whiskey Sour hybrid. It's sweet and tart but still spirit-forward. Definitely one of my favorite drinks containing grenadine.

History: This is the first classic cocktail I've featured that has its origins in Boston. In his book Imbibe!, David Wondrich introduces it as follows:

The Ward Eight looms large in the mythical history of mixology, wherein it is the Champion of the Hub, proving to one and all that when Boston was called on to contribute a Cocktail to the great pageant of American intoxication, it did not say "I shall not serve."

Okay, so maybe it's the only classic cocktail that has its origins in Boston. The Ward Eight was invented at Locke-Ober, which was located just off Winter Street in Downtown Crossing. This beautiful restaurant was the third-oldest in the city before it closed in 2012. I feel fortunate that I got to attend a dinner there before it shut down. It was a lovely building of dark wood paneling, rich carpets, and red leather chairs and sofas. I'm not surprised it was the birthplace of a classic cocktail.

Martin Lomasney

The subject of our story is Massachusetts politician Martin Lomasney. He had been on the Boston City Council and was considered the "ward boss" of Ward Eight, Boston's West End. This meant he carried some serious political clout in the district. The title is often used in conjunction with political corruption and organized crime, but that wasn't Lomasney. Though he occasionally bent the rules, he fought against corruption in Boston, so fervently that he was even shot by a contractor he had gotten fired for cheating the city. In the hospital, he commented, "People might not like their Aldermen, but they don't think we should be shot without a fair trial."

Lomasney shunned the term "ward boss," as well as "czar," which the media tried to christen him. The nickname he finally accepted was Mahatma, upon hearing that it implied more of a spiritual leadership.

In 1898, Lomasney was running for a seat in the state House of Representatives. He and his supporters were at Locke-Ober celebrating his victory... the night before the election. (And we think politics are bad these days.) They asked the bartender to invent a cocktail in Lomasney's honor, and the Ward Eight was born.



Of course, there is contention surrounding this story. Most sources say the bartender's name was Tom Hussion, but Imbibe claims Hussion didn't start working at the restaurant until 1900; the other name floating around is Billy Kane. Unless, of course, the party wasn't at Locke-Ober at all, and the drink was invented by Charlie Carter in 1903. David Wondrich says the election in question wasn't until 1905 anyway, but I'm not sure; it appears Lomasney did serve in the state legislature in 1899. And Wondrich also says that Ward Eight was what is now Roxbury and the South End, which is incorrect. (He adds "Where, it's safe to say, one of these hasn't been poured in fifty years." ARE YOU KNOCKING THE SOUTH END, DAVID WONDRICH?)

Anyway, the whole thing is a bit ironic since Lomasney didn't drink. But thank goodness his supporters did, so that Boston does not have to shoulder the shame of not contributing to "the great pageant of American intoxication."

Check out this piece for more on Lomasney. I'll leave you with his most famous quote: "Never write if you can speak, never speak if you can nod, never nod if you can wink."

Ward Eight

2 oz. rye whiskey
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. orange juice
1/4 oz. grenadine
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker. Add ice and shake until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail glass or coupe, and garnish with a cherry, a slice of orange, or both. Toast the Mahatma of Ward Eight.

Recipe from The Kitchn's 9-Bottle Bar.

Mary Pickford

This is the last recipe for Pink Week here on Garnish, and imagine my dismay when I made it and found that it was not, in fact, pink. I guess my homemade grenadine doesn't have quite enough red pigment in it for the Mary Pickford. Most pictures you see of this cocktail are pink, but I assure you, if yours turns out more of a peachy color, you haven't done anything wrong.

Grenadine admittedly plays a supporting role in the Mary Pickford, but it does the job well. The key players are white rum and pineapple juice, with a bit of maraschino liqueur to round out the taste. It's a very tropical drink, but it's not over-the-top. For one thing, the recipe I made had 2 oz. of rum, resulting in a pretty strong cocktail. The maraschino liqueur also lends an edge of sophistication to the taste. It's definitely a cocktail to keep in mind for any sort of tropical or beach-themed party, or as a go-to for friends who like their drinks fairly sweet.

Mary Pickford

History: Mary Pickford was a star of the silent film era, known as "America's Sweetheart" (even though she was from Canada). She won the second-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929 for her performance in Coquette. Like many affluent Americans of the time, she and her husband Douglas Fairbanks vacationed in Cuba to escape Prohibition laws. It seems clear that a bartender at a Havana hotel created this cocktail for Mary and gave it her name; what is unclear is who and where. It seems it was either Eddie Woelke at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba or Fred Kaufman at the Hotel Sevilla. Doug Ford over at Cold Glass tells me that Kaufman has the better claim. Check out his post on the cocktail as well.

Mary Pickford

2 oz. white rum
1 1/2 oz. pineapple juice
1 tsp. grenadine
1/4 oz. maraschino liqueur

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Strain into a cocktail or coupe glass. Garnish with cherries if desired.

Recipe from Vintage Cocktails.

Mexican Firing Squad

This is a cocktail I first had at Herbsaint in New Orleans, where I've stopped more than once for lunch before heading to the New Orleans airport. This was my first time making it at home, and so far it's the clear winner of the week. While I liked the previous two cocktails, I don't find the tart/sweet combination of grenadine to the be the best compliment to rye or Applejack. It's perfectly nice, but I don't really see myself reaching for those recipes time and time again.

The Mexican Firing Squad is another matter. Tequila was made for cocktails that play on tart and sweet notes. Something about this recipe is just so much more harmonious than the previous two. And while just about anything involving tequila and lime juice is bound to be reminiscent of a margarita, the Mexican Firing Squad does a good job of holding its own territory. It's the grenadine and the bitters that do it.

There are a few different versions of this recipe floating around online. A couple call for club soda, and at least one I saw recommended reposado tequila instead of blanco. I haven't had a chance to experiment, but I thought the recipe below was delicious. On a lark (after I took the photos), I did dust one of the cocktails with chipotle chili powder. I thought the spice was a nice addition (though my lips are burning just a little bit). Another thing I can't wait to try is making this cocktail with mezcal. Not only do I love mezcal, but John McEvoy of Mezcal PhD called the mezcal Mexican Firing Squad one of the two greatest mezcal cocktails known to mankind. Strong words from someone who literally wrote a book on mezcal.

History: For some reason I assumed this was a new cocktail, but it turns out it's been around for a while. It was discovered by writer and cocktail historian Charles Baker at the La Cucaracha Bar in Mexico City in 1937. He included the recipe in Gentleman's Companion, Volume II: Jigger, Beaker and Flask.

Mexican Firing Squad

2 oz. tequila blanco
3/4 oz. lime juice
3/4 oz. grenadine
5 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine ingredients in a shaker. Add ice and shake until chilled. Strain into an ice-filled rocks glass. Garnish with a slice of lime. And chili powder, if you're feeling adventurous.

Recipe from Punch.

Scofflaw

Pink week continues with another rosy-colored concoction: the Scofflaw. I first learned about this cocktail from David Lebovitz, who posted the recipe on his blog along with instructions for making homemade grenadine. Like the Jack Rose, it's tart and sweet. In fact, it's almost a little too candy-in-a-glass for me, despite its seemingly respectable ingredients and storied history. I might try a more powerful rye next time; Lebovitz recommends Hudson. In the meantime, I'd kind of like to serve one of these to a friend who swears they don't like whiskey and then tell them they're drinking rye and vermouth. Maybe the fact that they'd be surprised means the recipe needs some alteration.

History: From 1920 to 1933, the United States prohibited the production and sale of alcohol. I can only imagine that this was an extremely frustrating time for anyone who enjoyed a good drink. And yet Prohibition has been romanticized by today's cocktail culture. Speakeasy-style bars with hidden entrances have become fashionably retro, to the point where it's easy to forget that they were once hidden by necessity.

If it wasn't enough that buying alcohol could land you in jail, prohibitionists further sought to shame drinkers for their moral deficiencies. In 1923, a banker and staunch teetotaler named Delcevare King announced a contest to coin a shameful word for someone who flouted the law and drank liquor. Two people independently submitted the term "scofflaw" and split the $200 prize.

Prohibition-era poster: further incentive to drink.

Unfortunately for King, American tipplers at home and abroad enthusiastically embraced the term. Within a year, Harry's New York Bar in Paris was serving a drink called the Scofflaw in honor of their American ex-pat customers. The recipe was printed in Gavin Duffy's Official Mixer's Manual in 1934.

Scofflaw

1 1/2 oz. rye whiskey
1 oz. dry vermouth
3/4 oz. lemon juice
3/4 oz. grenadine
2 dashes orange bitters

Combine all ingredients in a shaker. Add ice and shake until chilled. Strain into cocktail or coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon or orange peel.

Recipe from David Lebovitz.

Bottle Buy: Laird's Applejack

America was late to the cocktail game. We have a good excuse, having not existed until 1776 and all, but it's still a fact. We made a lot of rum in the late 1700's and plenty of whiskey in the 1800's, but then we decided to get all prudish and prohibit alcohol entirely for 13 years. Of course, a surprising number of cocktails seem to hail from that period - adversity is the mother of progress, as they say.

A lot of the spirits I've talked about originate in Europe, but Laird's Applejack is as American as it gets. Established in 1780 in Scobeyville, New Jersey, by Revolutionary War veteran Robert Laird, Laird's was the first distillery licensed by the United States government. George Washington personally wrote to the Laird family asking for their Applejack recipe. Abraham Lincoln served Applejack in his tavern in New Salem, Illinois (TIL Abraham Lincoln ran a tavern). Lyndon Johnson gave a case of Applejack to the Soviet Premier in 1967. You might as well be drinking distilled Bald Eagle tears.

In fact, Applejack is made from (big surprise) apples. During the American colonial period, no one in New England was really growing enough grain for whiskey, but apples were abundant. The Laird family myth is that William Laird, a Scotsman and distiller who immigrated to the US in 1698, switched from distilling Scotch to Applejack for this reason. 

What is sold as Applejack today is actually a blend of 35% apple brandy and 65% neutral grain spirits. The Laird family says this reflects a trend towards lighter drinks in the 1970's. The original applejack that Washington drank is now sold as Laird's Apple Brandy, a much pricier product. Some recipes will specifically call for Applejack, and others for Apple Brandy, but subbing in the Applejack for the brandy will still give you close to the original taste.

For more on the Laird family and their distillery, check out this New York Times piece.

Laird's Applejack

Price: $17-20

Alcohol content: 40%

Popular cocktails: Jack Rose, Applejack Old Fashioned, American Trilogy, Honeymoon

The Jack Rose is the quintessential Applejack cocktail, and (what do you know?) it includes grenadine. The finished cocktail is tart and sweet. The pomegranate really helps bring out the apple flavors. Yes, it's very, very pink. But it bridges the gap between girly cocktail and classic cocktail quite nicely.

History: There are a few different backstories floating around for the Jack Rose, but in his book Imbibe! David Wondrich states with confidence that it was invented by Frank J. May, a bartender at Gene Sullivan's Cafe in Jersey City, around 1905. May's nickname was Jack Rose, and the cocktail was quite appropriate given that it was made with Applejack and is rose-colored.

The confusion arises from another fellow named Jack Rose who popped up in the news in 1912. Bald Jack Rose was a hit man who killed a gambler named Herman Rosenthal. Rose then helped pin the hit on a member of the NYPD's anti-gambling squad, who was almost certainly innocent. The drink was not named after him, or invented by him, but it seems destined to be associated with him.

The Jack Rose also has quite the literary resume. It was a favorite cocktail of John Steinbeck, and appears in The Sun Also Rises by author and drinker extraordinaire Ernest Hemingway.

Jack Rose

2 oz. Laird's Applejack
3/4 oz. grenadine
3/4 oz. lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake until well chilled. Strain into a cocktail or coupe glass. Garnish with a cherry or a slice of apple, if desired.

Recipe adapted from The PDT Cocktail Book.

Bar School: Grenadine

Like many cocktail newbies, I always thought grenadine referred to cherry juice. Specifically the neon-red cherry juice in the jar of maraschino cherries that the bartenders at weddings would use to make my Shirley Temples when I was little. I knew you could buy a bottle of grenadine, and I figured that was just the same stuff packaged up by itself to make it easier for adding to cocktails. But that's not the case.

Grenadine, real grenadine, is made from pomegranate juice. No cherries involved. In fact, the word comes from the French word for pomegranate, grenade (incidentally, the word "grenade" referring to the bomb probably originates with this French term as well - there's your non-cocktail-related tidbit for the day). As far as when it originated, it's unclear. This post at Alcademics (great name) searches all the classic cocktail books for evidence of when grenadine became widely used. The first mention of it is in 1891 in Cocktail Boothby's American Bartender. Before that, raspberry syrup was more popular than pomegranate. But by the 1910's, grenadine starts popping up everywhere. Popular drinks that are made with grenadine include the Tequila Sunrise, Jack Rose, Ward 8, and Monkey Gland.

The stuff you can buy off the shelf that's labeled "grenadine" is, nine times out of ten, nothing more than high fructose corn syrup dyed red. Seriously. The ingredients in a bottle of Rose's Grenadine are high fructose corn syrup, water, citric acid, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate, red #40, natural and artificial flavors, and blue #1. (Mmmm, blue #1.) It's a shame, because Rose's got its start in 1867 selling sweetened preserved lime juice to British sailors to prevent scurvy, which then became a popular ingredient in 19th century drinks. They're a real piece of cocktail history. Then they were purchased and traded by one big corporation after another (right now they are part of the "Dr. Pepper Snapple" group of Schweppes) and now they make nothing but brightly-colored sugar water. But I digress.

If you really want to include grenadine in your cocktails, the best thing to do is make it yourself. It's incredibly easy: the recipe is just equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar. Simmer on the stove until the sugar is dissolved. Basically, it's simple syrup with pomegranate juice instead of water. Some people recommend adding a dash of orange flower water or rosewater for flavor, or a bit of vodka to help it keep longer.

Since I've got a big batch of grenadine mixed up, and since that pomegranate juice don't come cheap, I'm officially declaring it "pink week" on Garnish. Whip up your own grenadine and follow along; four very pink recipes are coming your way.

Grenadine

1 part pomegranate juice
1 part sugar
1 dash orange flower water or rosewater (optional)

Combine pomegranate juice and sugar in a saucepan. Simmer on low until sugar is completely dissolved. Let cool. Add orange flower water or rosewater if desired. Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

Recipe from David Lebovitz.