I’m bored, so I’m taking random cocktail recipes from The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), giving them a try, and modifying/improving them if I think it’s necessary, and reporting my findings here.
I had intended to tackle the Nineteen Twenty Cocktail today, but when I set about doing so I realized that I had forgotten to look up “groseille syrup.” As it turns out, it doesn’t exist any more, but you can make your own. Oy. (Fun fact: red currants are also unobtainable.)
So randomly flipping through the book, I settled on
Empire Cocktail
- 1/4 apricot brandy
- 1/4 Calvados
- 1/2 gin
Again, Craddock’s instructions are to shake, but I stirred. Hold that thought.
Perhaps the day will come when I will be bold enough to declare a drink SINK right off the bat, but today is not that day.
However, this drink is an assault on the mouth. The dry gin hits you just like gin does to people who hate gin, and the overall taste is so brassy that it was tough to taste it more than twice.
So how to tackle it? I began by switching the gin and the Calvados, hoping that might round it out a bit. [That’s 1/2 Calvados, 1/4 each of gin and apricot.] Alas, it was not much better. (I began to suspect that shaking not stirring is required to dilute the hell out of these concoctions.)
Empire, take 2
Perhaps the gin was the issue. A more floral gin might take the edge off.
It did not.
(At this point I decided to make half-recipes — otherwise I was pouring perfectly good liquor down the sink, and I needed to minimize that.)
Empire, take 3
How about an Old Tom gin? And what if we switched to an apricot liqueur, which would be sweeter?
Nope.
Empire, take 4
What if we tried the pomegranate gin that my fabulous neighbor made and gave me?
A little more interesting, but still no .
Empire, take 5
Last ditch effort: stick with the pomegranate gin, but go back to the apricot brandy.
Alas, none of these were interesting enough to finish. (Thank goodness, because I was supposed to be cooking dinner, and following a Blue Apron recipe is not easy when one is squiffed, and even a sip or two out of five cocktails in rapid succession is a bit much.) If I had to serve one to guests, it would probably be #3, but I really would rather not.
So, how to score this? It’s obviously a SINK, but is it one or five? I thought about having a separate SINK score for both Craddock and me, but I realized I would always come out on the short end of that stick so I think what we’ll do is just declare the whole thing one big SINK.
SAVOY VARIATIONS SCORECARD
- Savoy: 1
- Dale: 1
- Sink: 1