Jack Rose – Classic Recipe & History

The Many Recipes Of The Jack Rose

There seem to be as many recipes for the Jack Rose as there are cocktail books. The Ensslin recipe is equal parts lime juice, grenadine, and apple brandy. The McElhone recipe includes dry and sweet vemouth with orange juice. Another book uses grapefruit juice, and others have gin. Long story short no two recipes are the same except for the Waldorf-Astoria’s recipe and Savoy’s recipe. While not exactly the same they use the same ingredients and almost the same proportions. Waldorf-Astoria’s recipe has maybe 1/3 oz more grenadine but thats the only difference. Both of those bars recipes were top notch and their similarity is why I am going with their recipes. Also their recipes are the ones later cocktail books will continue to use too.

out of all the jack rose recipes i have tied the Waldorf-Astroia and Savoy recipes are my favorite. The Waldorf-Astoria recipe reminds me of daiquiri. It has the same proportions and sweet to sour ratio as a daiquiri. The Savoy one reminds me of a normal whiskey sour. It is a bit more sour than sweet and fresher and lighter in flavor than the Waldorf-Astoria recipe. The attached recipe is the Waldorf-Astoria but for reference the Savoy recipe is 1/2 oz grenadine, 1 oz lime juice, 2 oz apple brandy, while the Waldorf-Astoria recipe is 1 oz grenadine, 1 oz lime juice, and 2 oz apple brandy. Both are fantastic.

The Most Important Ingredient In A Jack Rose.

The most important ingredient in a jack rose is the grenadine. A good grenadine will make all the difference in this cocktail. unfortuantly most store bought Grenadines are not that great. They tend to be more sweet than flavorful; Just sugar water with red color. Luckly its easy to make your own amazing grenadine for not much more than the cost of a budget store bought one. A liter of finest call grenadine is around $6, A 2 liter bottle of pure pomegranate juice is maybe $10, a 4 pound bag of sugar is $7 and orange blossom wate is $3. So for $10 a liter, and 10 minutes of cook time, you can have amazing grenadine. Some top shelf store bought Grenadines can go for $15 for 8 oz. To put that in perspective thats $60 a liter. Grenadine is very easy to make, check out my article on how to make it, and it will make all the difference in a great jack rose.

What Is Grenadine?

Grenadine is a simple pomegranate syrup, and it originated in Persia (modern-day Iran), where it is called Rob-e-anar and is a traditional ingredient in some Persian dishes. In Persian cooking, it is boiled down to a molasses-like thickness, but when used in cocktails, the thinner syrup viscosity mixes easier. The word grenadine comes from the French word for pomegranate, grenade. During the 19th century, pomegranate syrup was mainly unknown in the United States, yet syrups made from raspberries and strawberries were much more common in drinks. Grenadine starts to get popular as a cocktail ingredient in the US around the 20th century. Some of the first grenadine cocktails appear in George Kappeler’s (Of the New York’s Holland House Hotel) 1895 Modern American Drinks and Louis Fouquet’s 1896 Bariana. Grenadine most likely started as a European syrup that quickly made its way to the United States and by the 1910s became a much more common syrup in mixed drinks. It’s around this time that cocktails like the Jack rose and ward 8 come about. Regional variations of some drinks still exist, though; these result from Americans having a long history of using raspberry or strawberry syrups. For example, the rose cocktail in American cocktail books often used raspberry syrup, and English cocktail books used grenadine. Another example is the clover club cocktail, wherein the United States is made with raspberry syrup, but in English books like the savoy, it’s made with grenadine.

Recipe Resources

• 1935 The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book – Crockett
• 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book – Craddock