The truth is, no one alive knows the origins of this cocktail, and every best guess of its origin is just the best guess. The issue I have struggled with (and I’m sure many other drink writers have, too) is hoping to find that one true origin story. There are two common origins to the Planter’s Punch that get tossed around:
Mid 1800s Jamaica.
The Old Planter’s Hotel in Charleston, SC.
Had I been asked ten years ago, I would have pushed the hotel idea; then, I pivoted to the Jamaica one. Now I kinda say to hell with it; there seems to be a planter’s punch for every island in the Caribbean, with neither more “authentic” than the other. But the different significant versions are worth exploring. After much reading, I have concluded that every place that had a plantation probably had a version of the planter’s punch.
Bar La Florida’s 1933 Planter’s Punch Recipe.
The Cuban versions are the first recipes I can find where grenadine is used, and it more closely resembles the Planter’s punch most people think of. Also, both Bar La Florida and Sloppy Joes have the same ingredients, but the recipe’s proportions vary a bit so I would consider this type the overall Cuban version of the planter’s punch. Bar La Florida’s seems a bit sweeter, and that’s the one I’m printing here.
1/2 oz (15 mLs) Lemon Juice
1 Barspoon (5 mLs) Orange Liqueur
1 Barspoon (5 mLs) Grenadine
2 oz (60 mLs) Gold Rum
Why Are There So Many Planter’s Punch Recipes?
I include all these because they are all delicious, and one is not more authentic than the others. The oldest known recipe may be the Fun magazine recipe, but there is no certainty that it is even the original. There are more versions of this cocktail than I have included here, and they are all different and good. So don’t let anyone tell you your recipe is wrong because there is no right way to make the drink.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: Cuban
Servings
1
servings
Calories
154
kcal
ABV
30%
Total time
3
minutes
Make a Cuban style planter’s punch
Ingredients
1/2ozLemon Juice
1barspoon Grenadine
1barspoonOrange Liqueur
2ozGold Rum
Directions
Combine into a shaker, and add a scoop of shaved ice. If you do not have shaved ice then crushed ice will do.
Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
Pour the whole shaker into the serving glass. Ice and all
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More than a tequila cocktail, I think of this as a Kahula cocktail, and this is a fantastic Kahlua cocktail. So if you’re not usually a coffee liqueur fan, this one is still worth a shot. If you already like Black or White Russians, this one may become your new favorite. This cocktail taste exactly as you would expect. It tastes like cold tequila and Kahlua. What makes the drink good are the proportions. Kahlua is intensely sweet but the tequila cuts it well. The tequila is strong but the ice dilutes it and chills it just enough. The trick to getting this cocktail right is to stir it for a little bit longer than you typically would stir a drink like this. It needs that extra chill and water to balance out, but if the balance is right it tastes great.
There was a 1950s movie called The Brave Bulls, and maybe it was named after that, but there is no evidence to suggest so. I have never seen the movie but maybe it is where Vic Bergeron got the name from.
Tequila Cocktails And Their History
You may be surprised to know that tequila is not a common spirit in cocktails. Most commonly known tequila cocktails come from only two sources. The 1937 “Cafe Royal Cocktail Book” and the 1972 “Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide.” While there are a few outliers like the Paloma or Tequila Sunrise, the fact of the matter is tequila has never been a popular spirit for mixing. This is unfortunate because it tastes great. Tequila is often had straight, but most tequila cocktails can be traced to one of those two sources. This recipe is no different and is from the 1972 Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide.
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Created by Bob Butt in 1972, this drink was an entry into an orange liqueur mixing contest. The Long Island carries on the tradition of naming east coast cocktails after regions of New York and explicitly gets its name from the fact that Mr. Butt was working at a bar on Long Island.
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A Short History Of The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel In London.
In 1893, The American Bar at the Savoy hotel started serving American-style cocktails in London to the British upper class. The American Bar has always been a high-end bar but what set it on the map was when Harry Craddock became its head bartender in the 1920s. Harry Craddock was a British-born bartender who immigrated to the United States, eventually becoming a US citizen and head bartender of several high-end hotel bars. Still, Harry found himself out of work with the start of prohibition in 1920. He then immigrated back to England and became head bartender of the Savoy Hotel’s Bar. Harry transformed The American Bar from a high-end bar to one of the seminal cocktail bars of the 20th century. As the American prohibition was ending, the hotel realized it should record all of its most famous recipes and the innovations Harry brought to the bar. A year later, they published the Savoy Cocktail Book. Printed in 1934, the Savoy Cocktail Book documents the bar’s best recipes from the 1890s to the 1930s and stands as the pillar of prohibition-era European cocktail innovation. If Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide is the best cocktail book the 1800s gave us, then The Savoy Cocktail Book is the best cocktail book of the first half of the 1900s. I don’t think I will ever be able to drink there, though. A cocktail cost around $250 there, and they have one that’s almost $1000, and I’m not the Amazon guy, so good thing we have their recipe book.
What Does The White Lady Taste Like?
The white lady is a fantastic velvety smooth cocktail that tastes like a gin lemon meringue. The flavor profile is similar to the sidecar or margarita, but the egg whites add a wonderful texture and smoothness.
Should You Use Cointreau, Triple Sec, Or Curaçao?
You can use Cointreau or triple sec/Curaçao/orange liqueur. Technically they are all orange liqueurs, and the only reason for the different names is history, marketing gimmicks, and brand names. Check out my orange liqueur description for a more detailed account of that. Again you don’t have to use Cointreau; any orange liqueur will work. On that note, though, Cointreau is the best and makes for what I think is a noticeably better cocktail. The only downside to Cointreau is its price tag. It’s a little pricier than other brands (around 50 bucks for a liter), but it’s worth it. There have been other delicious and pricy orange liqueurs to hit the market in the last few years, but Cointreau is still the go-to.
How To Get Egg White Right In Cocktails.
Cocktails with egg whites are difficult cocktails to get right, and anyone who says otherwise is projecting a false image. Everyone who has made fizzes or sour with egg whites has had one of these pops open on them while shaking, only to make a mess. The best advice I can pass on to making any cocktail with egg whites is it comes down to 2 things; Technique and chemistry. A common technique that works very well in the dry shake. A dry shake is shaking all your ingredients together without ice first to make forming the foam easier. The foam will still form with ice, but you will work twice as hard for half the result if you shake with ice first. The first shake is only about 20-30 seconds of vigorous shaking, but this is the part that forms most of your foam. A little tip here is to wrap a kitchen towel around the seal of your shaker because no matter how strong you are or how tight your grip, it will pop open a little. As the egg whites unfold, they can expand up to 8x their original size, thus increasing the pressure inside the shaker and forcing small amounts of the sugary egg mix to squirt out. Wrapping a small towel around the shaker will catch this and keep things clean.
Next and more critical is chemistry. You have to get the science right for a cocktail with egg whites to form properly. Denaturing/unfolding egg protein into a meringue is more science than brawn, and a friend of mine who is a baker once gave me this advice for how she made meringue at the bakery.
Keep it room temperature.
Use an acid to help break the proteins hydrogen bonds and unfold it in addition to beating it.
Use sugar to stabilize the foam from collapsing and to form smaller bubbles.
A mistake I have made for a long time is using eggs fresh from the fridge. Even if I’m doing a dry shake, I’m still starting with cold ingredients. So take the eggs out and let them come to room temperature first. Cold egg protein is much more stable and difficult to break apart than if it is at room temperature. The next tip is to use acid. Bakers will use cream of tartar as the acid helps accelerate the denaturing process and beat it. In the cocktail, we use lemon or lime juice. Without using an acid, it is much harder to form a foam. The last bit of advice is to use sugar to stabilize the foamed protein from collapsing. A sweet liqueur alone isn’t enough. I’ve tried making a cocktail with egg whites with just liqueurs for sweeter alone, and they have never formed a good foam. This needs real simple syrup. If you don’t use sugar in your cocktail, the foam will form, but it will collapse back into the liquid just as fast, and you will be left with a thin layer of lame bubbles on top. It will still taste the same and be good, but that beautiful foam will be gone, and for these drinks, the large foam head is the garnish. The sugar makes the water “wetter” and helps keep the suspended air inside from combining into larger bubbles. This helps form a smoother micro bubblehead.
Cocktails with egg whites are some of the most elegant and sublime cocktails, but they are not the easiest to make. Eventually, you can get to a point where you can make them correctly and consistently, but it can take a while and many failed attempts. Hopefully, the tips I gave help shorten that journey. Also, there are many tips and tricks for shaking egg foam out there, and I tried to keep mine reasonable and realistic, but see what works for you. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and still, I have the occasional one that doesn’t foam up well, even though I make them all the same. It’s just the nature of the egg sometimes, and I accept it and make it again.
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The white lily is a fantastic cocktail. It is clean and strong with a delicate orange and herbal flavor. If you wanted to group it, then it’s more along the lines of a vesper or dry martini. The white lily does many things right that it’s really impressive—lightly sweet, strong, and delicate flavor, citrusy and herbal.
A Short History Of The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel In London.
In 1893, The American Bar at the Savoy hotel started serving American-style cocktails in London to the British upper class. The American Bar has always been a high-end bar but what set it on the map was when Harry Craddock became its head bartender in the 1920s. Harry Craddock was a British-born bartender who immigrated to the United States, eventually becoming a US citizen and head bartender of several high-end hotel bars. Still, Harry found himself out of work with the start of prohibition in 1920. He then immigrated back to England and became head bartender of the Savoy Hotel’s Bar. Harry transformed The American Bar from a high-end bar to one of the seminal cocktail bars of the 20th century. As the American prohibition was ending, the hotel realized it should record all of its most famous recipes and the innovations Harry brought to the bar. A year later, they published the Savoy Cocktail Book. Printed in 1934, the Savoy Cocktail Book documents the bar’s best recipes from the 1890s to the 1930s and stands as the pillar of prohibition-era European cocktail innovation. If Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide is the best cocktail book the 1800s gave us, then The Savoy Cocktail Book is the best cocktail book of the first half of the 1900s. I don’t think I will ever be able to drink there, though. A cocktail cost around $250 there, and they have one that’s almost $1000, and I’m not the Amazon guy, so good thing we have their recipe book.
Use The Right Orange Liqueur.
The most essential ingredient in the white lily is the orange liqueur. You have to use Cointreau, no other brand works, and I will tell you why. When mixing any cocktail, it’s best to use a neutral base spirit, orange liqueur, like Cointreau, and not one that uses an aged-based spirit, like Grand Marnier. Grand Marnier is excellent stuff and wonderful to drink by itself, but the color is off, and aged oaked brandy flavors compete with the cocktail’s other flavors. It’s excellent for sipping, not so much for mixing drinks. It specifically has to be Cointreau and not another brand of dry neutral orange liqueur because Cointreau has a ton of orange peel oils dissolved in it. This cocktail’s beautiful pale white color is the dissolved oils in the orange liqueur breaking off the alcohol molecule they are attached to in a process called the Ouzo effect or louching. It is similar to how absinthe turns pale white when you add water. Cointreau does too, but to a much lesser degree since it has fewer dissolved oils than absinthe. The amount of oil capable of being dissolved in a liqueur will be proportional to the ABV of the liqueur. At 40% ABV, Cointreau has far more orange peel oil than an orange liqueur would at 35, 30, or 25% ABV. The oil also adds a lot of flavors, but only Cointreau will give you that beautiful look and intense orange flavor. Again other orange liqueurs will still taste good but will not have the same appearance. Check out my Absinthe drip description for a more detailed explanation of the Ouzo effect.
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While probably not invented by Harry Johnson, his 1882 Bartenders Manual is the oldest printed book I could find to mention the Collins cocktail. The oldest concrete evidence of this cocktail is the Harry Johnson one. It seems both the John Collins and Tom Collins are invented around the same time, and the Bartenders Manual gives a pretty definitive recipe for both the John and Tom Collins. His John Collins recipe calls for genever (dry gin doesn’t start to get mixed into cocktails till the end of the 1800s/early 1900s), and his recipe for the Tom Collins calls for Old Tom gin. Harry Johnson’s collins recipes and names are clearly defined, but unlike Harry Johnson, Jerry Thomas’s 1887 Bartenders Guide does not follow his recipes. The Bartender’s Guide doesn’t even mention the John Collins but instead uses the name Tom Collins for every variation of the collins. It has three different recipes for Tom Collins. A Tom Collins whiskey, a Tom Collins brandy, and a Tom Collins genever. It doesn’t mention the Tom Collins with Old Tom gin and calls the one made with genever a Tom Collins.
To further complicate this, in 1885, a British cocktail book called “The New guide for the hotel, bar, restaurant, butler, and chef” by Bacchus and Cordon Bleu has a recipe for what they call a Fred Collins. Their Fred Collins Recipe is a Whiskey Collins with orange liqueur instead of simple syrup. Their Collins section states, “I should be glad if our caterers would agree what it is to be perpetually named. One Barkeeper calls it a John Collins – another Tom Collins. Harry and Fred are all members of the same family.” They then say they prefer the Fred Collins name, thus credence to Jerry Thomas’s version of the Collins in that the name is more a style than a specific drink. Hell, there was a Harry Collins we have never seen. The Savoy Cocktail Book does the same thing and has both a Dry Gin and Whiskey Tom Collins. Although The Savoy does say that a Tom Collins made with genever is instead called a John Collins.
While Harry Johnson uses the names as specific cocktails, the Bartenders guide and others seemed to use the collins as a cocktail structure more than a particular recipe. Like the Rickey, Daisy, or Fizz, the collins describe a structure of 2 parts base spirit, 1 part citrus, 1 part sweetener, and 4 or 5 parts carbonated beverage. Harry Johnson’s influence has been permanent, and the collins is ultimately both. It is a specific cocktail that Harry Johnson pushed and a cocktail archetype like others believed. Looking at its influence as an archetype, many popular cocktails are structurally collins that you would not think of as a Collins. The Adios Motherfucker, Mojito, French 75, Paloma, etc., are just fun variations on the Collins form.
What Does the Jean Collins Taste Like?
The Jean Collins is a brandy variation of the John Collins and good. The mellow-aged sweetness of the brandy perfectly blends with the orange liqueur and lemon juice into a bubbly, refreshing cocktail. Imagine this as a lengthened and more refreshing Side Car.
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First printed in the 1862 Bartenders Guide by Jerry Thomas, the Brandy Crusta is old as it is delicious. The Crusta is considered one of the oldest fancy sours and is named for its decorative sugar-crusted rim. It was invented in the 1850s by Joseph Santini in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, and was made to try and improve the taste of the standard sour cocktail. You can spot a crusta by its oversized decorative lemon peel that imparts that this is a special elevated sour cocktail.
What Does The Brandy Crusta Taste Like?
These fantastic cocktails taste light and delicate while not being overly sour or overly sweet. While the standard sour is more flavorful and benefits from sharper, more intense spirits, this one is different. In my experience, a top-shelf spirit works better. This is because you are not overwhelming the base spirit with a whole ounce of sweetener and citrus, and the more subtle finer qualities of a better base spirit can still come through. Make this with the perspective that you are not making a solid, flavorful cocktail but adding subtle flavor and complexity to an already delicious spirit.
Balancing This Delicious and Subtle Cocktail.
There isn’t any single essential ingredient in this cocktail; instead, all the elements come together in the proper balance. But if I tried to narrow it down, I would say the brandy, orange liqueur, and gum syrup are the most essential parts of this cocktail. You want to use a good base spirit for this cocktail as none of the other ingredients are made to mask the flavor of a lower-quality spirit. So whatever the quality of the base spirit will make a meaningful difference in the final product. The orange liqueur matters, too, because cheap orange liqueurs are typically not very good. I love buying on value, but I’ve never found a cheaper orange liqueur that also tasted good, and with how this drink is structured, you will notice a cheap orange liqueur—lastly, the gum syrup. You can use a standard simple syrup if you prefer and what that will change is the cocktail’s texture. Gum Syrup has gum arabic and gives the cocktail a velvety consistency similar to what egg whites provide. A smooth, meringue-y, velvet, dessert-like texture. Standard simple syrup will not add this texture and make for a thinner liquid texture cocktail, but you may prefer that. If you like your sours without egg whites, then opt for using standard simple syrup but if you like sours with egg whites, buy a bottle of gum syrup and give it a go.
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I’m a bit torn with this one. I wouldn’t say I like this drink, but it has its place in history, and some people like it. So here it is—the ultra-sweet and synthetic Midori Sour.
This isn’t a true late 70s Suntory Midori sour. The official recipe uses a sweet and sour mix, but that garbage has no place in this kind of an app, so I replaced it with orange liqueur and lemon juice. Sweet and sour is a lousy facsimile of those two ingredients. If you were thinking of making this drink or think you like it, I would suggest checking out the two improved Midori Sour recipes. The two improved recipes retain the melon flavor but mellow it out quite a bit and add more herbal or textural complexity to the drink. I think those two are decent drinks. For this one, I took one sip and then dumped it as soon as I finished taking the pictures for it.
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This is a very herbal and orange-flavored cocktail. It’s good, but it reminds me of a solid and herbal screwdriver or calvados cocktails. So if that sounds good to you, then the satan’s whiskers is right up your alley.
A Short History Of The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel In London.
Opened in 1893 The American Bar at the Savoy hotel started serving American style cocktails in London to the British upperclass. The American Bar has always been a high end bar but what really set it on the map was when Harry CraddoIn 1893, The American Bar at the Savoy hotel started serving American-style cocktails in London to the British upper class. The American Bar has always been a high-end bar but what set it on the map was when Harry Craddock became its head bartender in the 1920s. Harry Craddock was a British-born bartender who immigrated to the United States, eventually becoming a US citizen and head bartender of several high-end hotel bars. Still, Harry found himself out of work with the start of prohibition in 1920. He then immigrated back to England and became head bartender of the Savoy Hotel’s Bar. Harry transformed The American Bar from a high-end bar to one of the seminal cocktail bars of the 20th century. As the American prohibition was ending, the hotel realized it should record all of its most famous recipes and the innovations Harry brought to the bar. A year later, they published the Savoy Cocktail Book. Printed in 1934, the Savoy Cocktail Book documents the bar’s best recipes from the 1890s to the 1930s and stands as the pillar of prohibition-era European cocktail innovation. If Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide is the best cocktail book the 1800s gave us, then The Savoy Cocktail Book is the best cocktail book of the first half of the 1900s. I don’t think I will ever be able to drink there, though. A cocktail cost around $250 there, and they have one that’s almost $1000, and I’m not the Amazon guy, so good thing we have their recipe book. ck became it’s head bartender in the 1920s. Harry Craddock was a British born bartender who immigrated to the United States, eventually becoming a US citizen and head bartender of several high end hotel bars, but Harry found himself out of work with the start of prohibition in 1920. He then immigrated back to England and became head bartender of the Savoy Hotel’s Bar. Harry transformed The American Bar from a high end bar to one of the seminal cocktail bars of the 20th century. As the american prohibition was coming to an end the hotel realized it should record all of its most famous recipes and the innovations Harry brought to the bar and a year later they published the Savoy Cocktail Book. Printed in 1934 The Savoy Cocktail Book documents all of the bars best recipes from the 1890s to the 1930s and stands as the pillar of prohibition-era, European cocktail innovation. If Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide is the best cocktail book the 1800s gave us, then The Savoy Cocktail Book is the best cocktail book of the first half of the 1900s. I don’t think I will ever be able to drink there though. A cocktail cost around $250 there and they have one that’s almost $1000, and I’m not the Amazon guy, so good thing we have their recipe book.
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The Manhattan 100% of people think of when they order a Manhattan today is the post-prohibition style Manhattan. Bourbon, sweet vermouth, and angostura bitters. An excellent pairing of flavors, but had you ordered a Manhattan in the 1880s to 1919, you would have been served this cocktail instead. This Manhattan recipe is pulled from the 1887 Jerry Thomas Bartenders Guide. I do not say Jerry Thomas invented it, but this is the oldest printing I could find. The Manhattan mainly remained unchanged till 1919, as documented in the Old Waldorf Astoria Bar Book, which reported all their recipes from 1897 to 1919.
The two changes that changed the Manhattan from its pre-prohibition to post-prohibition form are changing from Boker’s bitters to Angostura bitters and no longer adding two dashes of orange liqueur. The recipe changed from using Boker’s bitters because the Boker’s company, which was already struggling financially by the 1910s, completely closed its doors around the start of prohibition. Those who knew the secret recipe took it to their graves. I believe in the mid-2000s, an old unopened bottle of Boker’s was found in a recently deceased man’s attic. The mixture was reverse engineered, and it was discovered to be primarily cardamom, cinnamon, and orange peel bitter. You are now able to find cardamom bitters made in the Boker’s style, but for almost 90 years, the closest anyone could get was using Angostura Bitters. The second change was removing the two dashes of orange liqueur. This change had more to do with the transition from pre-prohibition mixing ideologies to the prohibition era and post-prohibition mixing ideologies. The hallmark of pre-prohibition mixing ideology was to take a decent base spirit and add complexity and flavor with small amounts of bitters and liqueurs, with the base spirit still the most forward element. Prohibition-era and post-prohibition mixing ideology shifted to making flavorful cocktails where the base spirit blended in with the sodas or liqueurs. Not to say these styles were exclusive to any period, but there was a definite shift in what was popular and sold.
I cannot find any specific genesis of the Manhattan or who maybe created it. Often with very old cocktails, the creators were never credited, and many people claim they invented the drink. I can’t find any reference to it before the 1880s, and it was most likely created in New York. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was trendy to name drinks after cities or popular locations in New York. This is what gives us cocktails like the Bronx, the Oyster Bay, Brooklyn, etc. So there is no real reason it’s called a Manhattan other than being a famous New York cocktail naming convention of its time.
What Does The Pre-Prohibition Manhattan Taste Like?
Bourbon and Sweet Vermouth are a match made in heaven. The two ingredients’ flavor profiles pair perfectly. The sweet vermouth adds just enough sweetness to soften the bourbon, and the bourbon adds just enough sharp toasted oak volume and flavor to bring down the vermouth’s solid herbal notes. A few dashes of orange liqueur and cardamon bitters add a nice gentle citrus and spice complexity to the cocktail that Angostura bitters do not provide. These are all wonderful ingredients, and combined; they make a wonderfully sweet and spicy cocktail. I like the modern Angostura bitters Manhattan better, but this one is also tasty. If I were to equate the two to sipping spirits, I would say the original pre-prohibition one is like sipping rye whiskey, and the current one everyone knows it is like sipping bourbon.
What Is The Difference Between The Manhattan And The Old Fashioned?
Whether it’s the pre-prohibition or post-prohibition style, the Manhattan and old fashion are, for the most part, very similar cocktails. The main difference between the two is since the old-fashioned uses simple syrup/gum syrup to cut the strength of the bourbon; the taste is still a very clean, bourbon forward cocktail. On the other hand, the Manhattan comes across with a more mild bourbon taste that is balanced against a lightly sweet herbal flavor. So the Manhattan is a slightly sweetened bourbon and herbal flavored cocktail, and the old fashion is a somewhat sweeter but clean bourbon tasting cocktail.
Get The Sweet Vermouth Right.
The most essential ingredients in the pre-prohibition style Manhattan are the sweet vermouth and the cardamom bitters. Boker’s Bitters was one of the quintessential tastes of the 1800s cocktail, and you can finally get that flavor again with cardamom bitters. It’s like tasting history. A little bit more than the bitters, though, is the sweet vermouth. Vermouth is the defining flavor of this cocktail, and for not much more, you can buy some fantastic sweet vermouths. There isn’t a “bad” sweet vermouth, the cheap stuff is still pretty good, but for five bucks more, you can buy some fantastic top-shelf vermouths that will elevate this cocktail to new heights.
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