Anything You Can Do . . . : Gin and Rum in the Stork Club Cocktail

Recently I was brainstorming drinks for an informal dinner party, and the Stork Club Cocktail popped into my head. If you haven't tried it, the Stork Club is just about one of the easiest drinking panty droppers from the 1930s. I like to trot out this cocktail every now and again when I am looking for an uncomplicated, unpretentious start to a informal summer's eve. The combination of gin and orange juice give it away as a concoction created during the days of sub par gin and the uninspired ways to cover up the telltale flavor. Of course, it's very name points to its origins--the Stork Club was one of New York City's more famous speakeasies during Prohibition and was infamous for its rich and famous clientele for many years after. Refreshing, sweet and yet not so sweet, the Stork Club is an unassuming, uncomplicated sour, a lazy orange-laden Pegu Club. In the late days of spring, when the temperatures seem to first broach the seventies, and it's just warm enough to be noticeable, the Stork Club never fails to satisfy.

Stork Club Cocktail (from Lucius Beebe's Stork Club Cocktails (1946))

dash of lime juice (1/4 ounce)
juice of half orange (1 1/2 ounces)
dash of triple sec (1/4 ounce)
1 1/2 ounces gin
dash of angostura bitters (2 dashes)

Shake well and strain in chilled 4 ounce glass.

But this time was different. Almost as soon as I thought of the Stork Club, I was already transforming it into something else. Because the drink reads like an overly simple tiki drink--a blend of juices, bitters, and a liqueur on top of a versatile base--rum was just a natural impulse. But in general this cocktail is crying out for variations. The lime juice invigorates the orange juice. The bitters add necessary depth. Of course, the liqueur can easily be modified--orange juice with a hint of lime is incredibly forgiving. Whether apricot liqueur or grapefruit, peach liqueur or even something a bit more herbal like Strega, there is ample room for experimentation.

What struck me was how easy the substitution really was, both mentally and in terms of taste. It was quite a no-brainer. And while many cocktails allow for rum to stand in for gin to wonderful effect, the most notorious being the Bee's Knees (gin) and the Honeysuckle (light rum) or Honey Bee (Jamaican rum), I hadn't really paid that much attention before. Of course, an argument could be made based on drink families--a sour, whether it has gin, rum, or even whiskey, is still delicious. But whiskey does not work as a stand-in for gin in all citrus manifestations. The chemical reactions inherent to barrel-aging make sure of this. And while white spirits in general will usually work as a substitute in a pinch--some play better than others. White rum will generally work in any gin drink that includes citrus, and many that don't; white dog and tequila, each with its own funkier flavors, are harder to meld. The Stork Club is the perfect example of a citrus cocktail where both rum and gin work really well, and the substitution doesn't make the drink step too far out of its original packaging.

West 58th Street 

1 1/2 ounces white rum
1 ounce orange juice
1/4 ounce lime juice
1/4 ounce apricot liqueur
1 dash Angostura bitters

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Notes on Ingredients: I used Chairman's Reserve white rum, Bitter Truth Apricot liqueur and Angostura bitters.

A Tale of Three Drinks Featuring Pineapple Syrup

Spring is a season you just can't count on here in the Pacific Northwest. Sure, you may get a week of eighty degree weather, but often it is chased by a dreary rainy patch where the temperature swings twenty degrees back into the low sixties. But even as I will summer to arrive by wearing lightweight coats that keep me shivering, I figure I have to make my own sunshine. While I have a friend who says that when he tastes a bit of rum, how can the sun not be out, I opt for a different tack. Pineapple. Not only is fresh pineapple simply a blissfully tasty snack, but a single pineapple can also create a syrup that can compel sunshine from the door of your refrigerator. The best part is that pineapple syrup is incredibly easy to make. All you need is a knife and a cup of simple syrup. Breaking down the pineapple is the only obstacle. But once you've got this delicious syrup, what do you do with it besides pour it generously over ice cream or pancakes?

A San Francisco Legend
Born in the late 1800s, pisco punch is one of the earliest, more famous uses for pineapple syrup. Duncan Nicol, proprietor of the Bank Exchange Saloon in San Francisco, saw his pisco punch gain notoriety far and wide. Travelers from all over the country heard tales of this potent concoction and then made their way in droves through his doors to get a taste. The drink centers on pisco, a spirit first introduced to the United States by South American sailors as they passed through San Francisco. Even today pisco is very popular in San Francisco. And while this lesser known spirit forms the base, it is the pineapple that makes this drink sing. For years, the recipe for pisco punch was a mystery. At the beginning of Prohibition, Nichols refused to disclose the recipe as he closed up shop forever. Thankfully, a discovery made in the 1970s brought the drink back. In truth, it is a very simple punch. Which begs the question, What made it so famous that its praises were sung coast to coast?  Rumor has it that cocaine is what really gave this drink its kick. Still others have posited that the secret ingredient was actually the syrup. Instead of pineapple macerated in simple syrup, the original recipe called for pineapple gomme syrup. The pineapple is steeped in a syrup with gum arabic in it, a common ingredient in the 1800s that fell out of popularity. The cocktail renaissance has, however, brought it back. Gomme syrup provides a drink with a velvety texture and a richness that are unique.

Pisco Punch

2 ounces pisco
1 ounce water
2/3 ounce (4 teaspoons) pineapple gum syrup
3/4 ounce lemon juice.

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a punch glass. Garnish with a syrup-soaked pineapple chunk.

Note on Ingredients: I used Piscologia pisco. I also used a 2:1 simple syrup for the base of my pineapple syrup in place of the pineapple gum syrup. The richness adds a similar but not exact texture to cocktails While it is not the same as gum syrup, it is easier to make at home.

Blast from the Past
Fixes are a product of a long forgotten era--when individualized pours were steadily overtaking the communal punch bowls of old. Long before the cocktail would become a catch-all phrase for any drink in a conical glass, drinks that followed a formula were popular--sours, fixes, daisies, fizzes, and Collins just to name a few. Collins and fizzes both preserved the soda water element. Sours became concentrated punches in short form. Daisies and fixes revolved around different choices for sweetener, though no clear pattern was ever established. While differences come and go between the daisy and the fix, the treatment of the ice creates the distinction--fixes are served over crushed ice, daisies, like sours, are not.

Though liqueurs and various other sweeteners were used in fixes, my favorite variation is still Harry Johnson's Brandy Fix. Pineapple syrup was a common choice among bartenders of the time, but it is the green chartreuse that really caught my attention. Green chartreuse and pineapple go extremely well together--the sweetness of the fruit works balances out the herbal intensity of the chartreuse. The Dean surely stumbled upon a great pairing there.

Brandy Fix (Harry Johnson, Bartender's Manual, 1900)

2 ounces brandy
1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
1/2 ounce pineapple syrup
dash of green Chartreuse (1/4 ounce)
1/4 ounce simple syrup

Shake with ice and strain into a wine glass or tumbler filled with crushed ice. Add a splash of seltzer, adorn with lots of fruit and go to it.

Notes on Ingredients: I used Pierre Ferrand 1840 cognac, and a 1:1 simple syrup.

A Bittersweet Variation
 During the summer, Campari goes in everything and variations of variations of Negronis abound. I am also not ashamed to admit that I do very much enjoy the reddish pink hue that every Campari-laced cocktail takes on. The shade reminds me of perfect summer sunsets, of watching the sun steadily drift behind the Olympic mountains. Perhaps not surprisingly, Campari pairs quite well with pineapple. I first learned this on a Tiki Sunday while I was visiting Drink in Boston a couple of years ago. After asking for something unusual to follow a lovely champagne cocktail, I was presented with a Jungle Bird. This exotic tiki drink originated from the Avery Hotel in Kuala Lumpur in 1978 and it combines dark rum,lime juice, Campari and pineapple juice.

With a new batch of pineapple syrup in my fridge, I remembered the Jungle Bird and began looking for other drinks that match up pineapple and Campari. My search led me to the Argonaut, a drink created to celebrate Campari's 150th anniversary in 2010. The drink could easily be seen as a play on the pisco punch, where the interaction between the Campari and the pineapple take center stage. This is definitely a drink to witness the day as it transitions into night.

Argonaut (Marco Dionysos)

1 ounce Campari
1 ounce pisco
3/4 ounce pineapple syrup
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce orange juice
2 dashes orange bitters

Shake ingredients with ice and strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Garnish with an orange twist.

Notes on Ingredients: I used Piscologia pisco, Angostura orange bitters, and Gran Classico and Aperol to approximate the Campari.

A Rum Drink Just in Time for Spring: Bertita's Special

March--a trying month to be sure. As winter loses its grip, a great impatience flourishes inside me, a restlessness stemming from the wearisome months of dark sky and early night. Accompanying this is a longing for all things bright, shiny, and summer-related. All of this daydreaming is of course helplessly premature. In places that are pummeled with snow and brutally cold temperatures, I imagine this phase occurs in February, when burrowing under layers and inside houses exceeds most people's thresholds for being couped up, mentally as well as physically. Seattle's winter weather at worst functions by erosion--you don't quite feel the pressure of a constant barrage, but little by little it builds up. For me, rock bottom occurs in early March.

I often wonder if our cravings are linked to our view of the passing of seasons, or vice versa. First comes that curious urge for all things barrel-aged that accompanies winter. It is not an unknown phenomenon, colder temperatures and shorter days readily link up with winter warmers usually including whiskey in all its various incarnations. Personally, that usually means rye, though this year I did take a brief sojourn into blended scotch. But restless taste buds can only handle so much of the same. As the season waxed and waned and the temperatures strayed from their lows, giving us teasing glimpses of the Spring, I found myself craving gin in combination with various amari. But at some point it all reaches a head, and drinks that are dark and bitter aren't as satisfying as they once were. So here we are: the days are lengthening, the cherry blossoms are tinting the streets with brilliant dashes of pink, and winter jackets seem a bit too heavy and oppressive. It can mean only one thing: the time for rum, citrus, color and maybe a bit of silliness has arrived. Thus, I flipped the page to Bertita's Special at exactly the right time, when tropical flavors can ease the passing of the last days of dreariness.  

Bertita's Special comes from South of the Border, from the small city of Taxco located in the mountains of Mexico, where many artists and artisans from America took up residence during the early part of the twentieth century "for various reasons, & with varying success." Bertita's Bar, owned by Dona Bertha, has been more famously linked to the creation of another drink, the Margarita. At best, it is one vague claim among many. Bertita's Bar, as Charles Baker notes, is a "dingy, but mildly celebrated place" and he notes that this drink--I am sure it was not the only one--is "poured with a heavy hand," which, considering Baker's taste, is probably why it was included in his tome. I can't help but imagine Bertita's as a spectacular example of a dive bar, with the perfect mixture of local color and lack of polish that makes certain places an unpretentious joy to visit.

Bertita's Special Cocktail (as adapted)

3 ounces light rum
3/4 ounce lime juice
2 ounces orange juice
1 teaspoon grenadine

Shake ingredients briefly with ice. Strain into a chilled Collins glass packed full of crushed ice. Float 1 teaspoon Jamaican rum on top.

Note on Ingredients: I used Cruzan white rum, homemade grenadine, and Smith and Cross for the float. Appleton's Estate V/X makes a fine substitute where Smith and Cross is unavailable.

Baker's instructions called for shaking the ingredients with cracked ice, pouring the contents--ice and all--into a large champagne glass, and then adding the float of Jamaican rum. I decided to shake the ingredients briefly with cubed ice and serve it over fresh crushed ice. In fact, it was very enjoyable and didn't become incredibly watered down.The aroma was full of Jamaican rum, which make sense because it was sitting right there on top. The first taste was also filled with the unmistakable hogo stamp of the Smith and Cross. What a wonderful way to start! Once through the initial sip, however, the lime stepped in. This drink reminded me of a mellowed-out daiquiri--tart, brisk and dry with a good dose of rum. Perhaps it would be more accurate to liken this libation to a mellower version of the Bacardi cocktail, a simple daiquiri with grenadine in place of sugar. With only a teaspoon of grenadine, the orange juice tempered the strength of the lime. The grenadine did, however, provide a nice color as well as a light berry note that became more apparent as the drink warmed up.The rum thoroughly dominated the aftertaste. This cocktail was exceptionally refreshing and really fit with my March mood, but it would also be wonderful during the warmer months.

Aunt Emily, or the Golden Dawn?

Cocktail history is a slippery thing. Memories concerning anything that occurs while imbibing, especially if those memories concern the practice of imbibing, can be full of loopholes, black holes, misrememberings (both for good and ill) and pretty much anything else that can make makes something seemingly straightforward veer into the realm of murky. Inebriation is the always the culprit--that is a given. But I'm sure a contributing factor is that at the time no one is aware that history is happening. Maybe I am too cynical, but I doubt that John Collins, famous for creating a superbly refreshing, timeless libation, was consciously trying to acquire a place in the annals of cocktail history when he was making and serving his famous punches at Limmer's Hotel. He was just a man at a specific time and place doing a job. The only reason we know what we do about Mr. Collins is because someone cared to write it down and somebody else (David Wondrich) cared to find it. We are not so lucky with other cocktails, namely the Martini. The origins are unknown because when people were first drinking them, little as written about them. Can we really blame them? At the time it was just an amazing new drink. I know that when I sit at a bar, I am not thinking, "The next cocktail I order could be the next classic that will be remembered long after I am dead. Maybe I should write about it so that the origin story can be easily found." Okay, I lied.  I am a blogger--of course I think that. 

The Aunt Emily's story has some elements that are concrete, as there are concrete elements in the story of the John Collins, and also some that are more elusive, like the Martini's non-story. So basically, this cocktail's history poses more questions than it answers. At least to me, these loose ends are more curious and interesting than the drink itself. But we will get to that. Charles Baker ran into this drink in Havana, Cuba and noted that it was the "creation of Sloppy Joe, in Havana, Years before His Spot Got to Be a Sort of Half Way House for Every Itinerant American on the Island." Without any specific details from our friend Mr. Baker, it is almost impossible to piece together the information to properly date Baker's statement, or even when he was in Cuba for that matter. Here is what we do have: Sloppy Joe's opened in the early 1920s, and from looking though the indexes of two Sloppy Joe's cocktail manuals, I have been able to determine that the Aunt Emily was served sometime after the 1932-1933 season and sometime before 1935. Since Jigger, Beaker and Glass was published in 1939, Baker must have visited Cuba sometime between 1933 and 1939 and had this drink. Alas, there is no way to be sure that the Aunt Emily wasn't created or served even earlier than that and just didn't make it into the cocktail guide.  So far pretty straightforward, right?

Aunt Emily

3/4 ounce Calvados

3/4 ounce gin

3/4 ounce apricot brandy
3/4 ounce orange juice
1 dash grenadine

Shake ingredients in an ice-filled shaker. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Notes on Ingredients: I used Boulard Pay D'Auge Calvados, Bellringer gin, homemade grenadine and apricot brandy.

When I was putting this drink together, somewhere before the apricot brandy but after the Calvados, I realized I had made a drink that was almost exactly the same only a few weeks before. After a bit of searching, I realized that the Aunt Emily is the identical twin of another classic drink, the Golden Dawn--same ingredients, same proportions. The only difference is that in the Aunt Emily the grenadine is added to the drink instead of sunk in with a cherry afterward. In Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Ted Haigh tells us that the Golden Dawn was named the "World Finest Cocktail" in a contest in 1930. To make things even more complicated, the Golden Dawn has two different published versions. The proportions for drink as printed in the Cafe Royal Cocktail  and UKBG Guide to Drinks match the equal proportions of the Aunt Emily. The version as printed in the New York Times and the Times (London) is slightly different--the amounts of gin and Calvados have been increased, and the orange juice and apricot brandy have been decreased.

The question becomes: Did the Golden Dawn or the Aunt Emily come first, or did they just spring into being almost simultaneously on two different islands thousands of miles apart? What makes the whole thing even more curious is that in Diffordsguide7, published in 2008, the Aunt Emily is listed with same proportions as the Times recipe for the Golden Dawn. Ah the twists and turns of history. But if there is a connection, I can't find any. Red herring, anyone?

Golden Dawn (Times version)

1 ounce Calvados
1 ounce gin
1/2 ounce apricot brandy
1/2 ounce orange juice
1 dash pomegranate grenadine

Combine all ingredients except the pomegranate grenadine and shake like crazy in an iced cocktail shaker; strain into a cocktail glass. Drop a stemless cherry with no pick into the drink as garnish. Dribble a little real pomegranate grenadine through the drink. Do not stir.

The aroma of this cocktail is full of apricots and apples. On first taste, I noted that it tasted, well, fruity. The flavors of the orange juice and Calvados created the backbone of the drink, with the dry botanicals of the gin becoming more pronounced on the swallow. This drink was very dry, but it had an unexpectedly thick texture. I believe this was because I used homemade apricot brandy, which also contributed a nuttier flavor as I included the pits in my recipe. My overall impression was that this drink was a bit too sweet, but the flavor combinations were unusual and not unpleasant.

In my opinion, this drink does not rank high among those in Baker's book, but there have definitely been worse. If I made this again, I would definitely follow the Times version/modern version of the Golden Dawn/Aunt Emily and increase the spirits and decrease the apricot brandy and orange juice.