#23. Humpty Dumpty Cocktail

Considering how often Ensslin sneaks eggs into these recipes, I find it kind of absurd that there's not any egg in a Humpty Dumpty. I mean, it's practically asking for it.

I'm glad it's egg-free, though, because after this one, we tried some egg concoctions? Eggy.

This drink is instead 1:2 maraschino liqueur to dry vermouth. And it's pretty good! Maraschino must be crazy sweet on its own, because cut with the dry vermouth, it's still lightly fruity. And reasonably nice. I might even make it again, on purpose.

But, Ensslin sometimes seems to stumble with certain details. It seems criminal to not put a cherry in this, but his recipe does not call for one. It's got great color, too, so I really think a martini glass would be the right way to serve this. But what do I know?

#18. Dixie Cocktail

This falls into the Canadian cocktail category--that grouping of drinks with totally inexplicable names. Gin, dry vermouth, absinthe (2:1:1), a quarter orange, a dash of grenadine.

Opinions were mixed. GG will barely bring herself to taste anything with any absinthe, and this has a strong absinthe scent. (A little absinthe goes a long way, which, frankly, is part of what I like so much about it. It's fantastic as a flavoring agent in small quantities.) Another sampler said, I believe, that it was the worst thing ever, but all my friends who've tried a few of the earlier concoctions were perfectly happy with this one.

The taste is mostly absinthe and orange, with some grenadine sweetness. The gin and dry vermouth get pushed to the side.

This is complicated, with big, competing tastes, but it's also pretty nice. Reminds me of some discussions of licorice with a British coworker. In this country, we eat hardly any licorice, and when we do, we eat it straight, and prefer it rubbery. In Britain, they mix licorice with Everything, and it's awesome. I would eat orange licorice by the handful if anyone wanted to sell it to me. It works just fine, unless you are an absinthe hater. And who wants to be an absinthe hater? If it was good enough for Van Gogh, it's plenty good for me.

Closest I can find to this one in Difford's is a Maurice Martini, which includes sweet vermouth but no grenadine. Similar, and different. I probably like this one, with the grenadine, better, but maybe I'll try a Maurice sometime.

#15. Snyder Cocktail

Ah, Snyder. Ol' Snyder liked his martini in a highball glass, with a little curacao and orange peel. That's what this is, really- a relatively dry martini, sweetened with curacao, garnished with orange peel. Two thirds gin, one third dry vermouth, two dashes curacao, and orange peel.

It's not terrible. The curacao and orange peel make this more interesting than it would be otherwise. I like the subtle citrus, but still get a strong vermouth aftertaste. Maybe if I drink enough of it, I'll start enjoying vermouth? Here's hoping! Otherwise, this is going to be a real slog.

Difford's calls this a Snyder martini, and uses Grand Marnier instead of curacao. But I'm with Ensslin on this one, if only because Grand Marnier is expensive (Seriously Expensive) and curacao is basically free. At least, the horrible blue stuff that I got was super cheap. I wish it weren't blue, though. It makes everything look like Kool-Aid.

#8.1 Fluffy Ruffles- Copycat of Little Princess

How sensible that the Fluffy Ruffles would have a name equally as ridiculous as the Little Princess, since it's the same drink. Yet another copycat spotted. The only difference is that the Fluffy Ruffles gets some lime rind. Both are equal parts rum and dry vermouth, and both are terrifying. I consider this one tested as I was sure to slice up some lime when we tried the Little Princess, thinking that if nothing else it would help the rum go down a little smoother. It did not.

I should probably be trying some of these with white rum, as I think that's the preferred method. But, I might not. Mixing rum with vermouth, no matter the color of the rum or the vermouth, just strikes me as a horrible idea, so I have a hard time imaging it improving with any substitution, other than, of course, swapping out the vermouth for ginger ale.

#14. Bronx Cocktail

I must say- the Bronx is the best of the vermouth-heavy numbers so far. Half gin, plus a quarter each of sweet and dry vermouth, plus a quarter of an orange. The orange mixes nicer than the lime in this case and gives this one a nice citrus smoothness. Reminds me more of the Dubonnet drinks than the vermouth-heavy entries. Not too shabby.

Soon, though, I'll have to make a Noon Cocktail, which is just this plus an egg white. Madness! Ensslin and his eggs. People used to put eggs in everything, if Ensslin is to be believed.

To summarize: best of the vermouth-based drinks so far, not that that's saying that much. But, it is saying something.

Difford's includes the exact same recipe with the same name, which is a bit of a rarity. Most of these recipes have endured some changes over the years in either name or content, but this one is a rock. Difford claims this was the first cocktail to use fruit juice, but really, that's the sort of thing I'm confident is utterly unverifiable.

#10. Bill Lyken's Delight

I had high hopes for this drink. Or, at least, I hoped it wouldn't be terrible, but it kind of was. Equal parts dry gin and dry vermouth, topped with 4 dashes curacao, shaken with lemon and orange rind, served with a cherry.

The blue curacao left the drink an unpleasant blue-green that made it look like it was going to taste horrible. Its actual taste didn't do much to change anyone's opinion. The dry vermouth taste dominates, with only the slightest citrus character as competition. I don't know what the point of the cherry was at all.

I wanted the curacao to do something more interesting than it did. I probably used more than strictly necessary--the dashes turned into perhaps a half ounce, in a drink split three ways. But, the main factor here is the dry vermouth. If you don't like it, you won't like this drink.

We talked this one through a bit as we endured it. To the modern palate, it's odd to have so many drinks that don't involve any mixers but rather just booze. GG noted the Delight's odd combination--it tastes both too hot and too sweet. "Hot" meaning that the taste and feel of the alcohol is quite pronounced. Usually, sweetness covers up heat and makes a drink taste "weaker" than it actually is. In this case, the cocktail managed to taste too strongly of alcohol while remaining cloyingly sweet. This apparently delighted Bill Lyken, but Bill must have had bad taste in drinks. I never need to drink one of these again.

Closest corollary in Difford's guide would be the Snyder martini, which is the same basic mix

minus the rinds. I'm going to assume that it isn't terribly good either.

#8. Little Princess

What country has a princess who's drinking an equal mix of dry vermouth and rum? Surely this nation was never a world power. It was probably somewhere obscure like Bohemia or something.

In short, this was not a good drink. Rather than complementing each other, the rum and vermouth seemed to maintain their worst aspects. The harsh herbal character, almost savory, of the vermouth did nothing to combat the rum's heavy, chemical feel.

I had a feeling this one was going to be rough so I cut up a lime, thinking it would help, since of course rum and lime go together like funny hats and the Pope. It wasn't enough, though. The addition of lime just made it taste like the same mess, plus lime. Some other samplers hunted around the kitchen for extra additives, and threw in some ginger and sugar, and reported that that helped.

OF COURSE it helped! You can add ginger and sugar to anything, and it will taste marvelous. That proves nothing at all. I don't care how miserable your booze is- if you top it off with a generous layer of ginger ale, it will be imminently palatable. That doesn't prove anything. You add all this stuff, and you're essentially saying, "Hey, if you make this into a totally different drink, it tastes fine." Yes, well.

Skip this one. And, while you're at it, skip anything whose recipe is just some kind of liquor and dry vermouth because it's almost certainly undrinkable. There. I said it. Do whatever you must, vermouth lobby. I can take your fury. I've seen worse.

#3. Polo Cocktail

Because I'll have to build up my bar quite substantially to make it through the book, I'm hitting some of the simpler recipes first, which means a lot of gin and vermouth. The polo cocktail is exactly like the perfect cocktail, with the inclusion of the juice of half a lime.

The lime makes a surprising difference. The addition makes the whole thing pleasantly citrusy, like a slightly sour grapefruit. I also find myself thinking of a fruit salad mixed in lime juice. Sour, but also sweet and fruity. I think it's a big improvement over the poorly named perfect cocktail.

I do think this all might be proving my theory that I don't like vermouth, though. I'm not sure if I'm enjoying the combination of lime and vermouth, or if I just like the lime covering up the vermouth. Hard to say but there are plenty of vermouth-heavy recipes left to go, so I may find out yet.

Difford's includes nothing that comes any closer to this recipe than the martini perfect, which has orange bitters instead of lime. I'm going to assume that that's about the only remaining legacy of these two different 1916 equal-parts sweet vermouth, dry vermouth, and dry gin recipes. Probably because I'm not the only one who doesn't rank vermouth as a favorite spirit.

Research notes: Gin vs. Gin

Ensslin was doubtless a fantastic barman, but his book opens the door for all manner of confusionism. There are slight errors throughout--the book is nominally in alphabetical order within each section, but there are plenty of failures to keep things in order.

There are also--and this is more of a problem--a number of cases in which the ingredients are less than strictly clear, because they are not labelled consistently. Gin, perhaps the most-used spirit in the book, is a particular bit of trickiness. We have references to gin, dry gin, Old Tom Gin, El Bart Gin, English gin, Holland gin, and possibly others I haven't spotted. So. What's it all mean?

Holland gin, at least, I assumed to be a separate spirit, which is correct. It is, by reputation, sweeter than the (here) more prevalent London dry. I hope I'll be able to find a bottle. Initially I assumed that both Old Tom and El Bart were particular makes that Ensslin wanted to suggest.

Old Tom, though, is a style of gin, not a particular product. It is sweeter than dry gin and but drier than Holland gin, and I suspect the most difficult to come by of the three. Difford's includes a small number of drinks that call for Old Tom gin, but Difford never does me the favor of specifying a brand of Old Tom that I might be able to buy. Of course, Difford is based in the UK so he probably has far more gin choices readily available than I.

This still doesn't account for all of Ensslin's notes, though. On page 16 is the Fifty-Fifty cocktail, half "dry gin" and half "French vermouth." (Ensslin uses "French" to designate dry vermouth.) On page 17 is the Gibson cocktail, half "gin" and half "French vermouth."

So what am I supposed to do about that, Hugo Ensslin? Either "dry gin" and "gin" aren't the same thing, or Ensslin is padding out his book with multiple names for the same drink. Or, it's a simple editing error, in which case I'm pretty much out of luck.

The Gibson is widely used today to refer to a subtle martini variant--a martini with cocktail onions instead of olives. Assuming that Ensslin's Gibson has some connection to what we now think of as the Gibson, I have a hard time imagining that the gin in his Gibson ought to be anything other than dry.

Hence, I can only assume that these cocktails were offered different names by Ensslin because he says that the Fifty-Fifty is to be stirred, and then Gibson is to be shaken. Truly, we are dealing with a sophisticated science if that subtle a variation is enough to distinguish two drinks from each other.

For now, I'm going to deal with this by assuming that there are three kinds of gin that Hugo wanted me to use--London dry, Old Tom, and Holland. Anytime Old Tom or Holland are not listed, I'm going to assume any reasonably nice London dry will be acceptable. I'll hold off on the recipes that call for Old Tom for now, until I either find a bottle, or decide that it's too difficult to come by.

#1. The Perfect Cocktail

I thought the perfect way to start off this project would be with a 1916 martini. However, in my mind Ensslin called for gin, vermouth, and Angostura bitters, but in real life, he wanted orange bitters, which I have not yet acquired.

So instead, I went with "The Perfect Cocktail" which is a mix of gin, sweet vermouth, and dry vermouth. I was leery of the vermouth, my lone experience with it at home being an attempt to make vodka martinis with Martini Rosso vermouth many years ago. I used too much; I found the mix almost undrinkable.

This time around, I got Noilly Prat for both the sweet and dry, and I have to say, this is not a bad drink at all. It's not going to be my new favorite or anything like that, but I enjoyed it more than I expected.

Overall, the gin dominates the nose, but I think the sweetness of the red vermouth is the stronger taste. I notice a fair bit of gin aftertaste (I used Bombay) but the drink itself is almost like drinking strong red wine cold. Lots of herbal taste, though, and I thought a little sweeter than I would prefer. I look forward to some of the many other gin / sweet vermouth / dry vermouth drinks that pepper Recipes for Mixed Drinks in different rations. I think I'd probably like this mix pretty well with a higher ratio of gin to vermouth.

Throughout this project I'll be checking to see if these drinks still get references in modern guides or whether they've been forgotten. I'm checking with Difford's first because I got a copy of the 8th edition of his bar book and I find it tiny and fantastic. The closest I can find in name and recipe at his site is the Martini Perfect, which is exactly like Ensslin's recipe only with the addition of orange bitters. If I happen to try it again, I'll add the bitters and see what I prefer.

But, on the whole, a pleasant surprise, since I kind of expected not to like this one. Unlikely to drink too many of these in the future, but not bad at all.

[ADDENDUM] Went to see Prayers for Atheists (great show, by the way) after writing this and had an Abita Amber at the bar. And, it tasted just like dry vermouth, which was extremely unpleasant. The perfect cocktail seems to be a bit of a palate ruiner, so I'm going to downgrade its charms slightly. Not a good drink to order if you plan on enjoying anything else after.