Prince of Wales’s Cocktail

I’ve been having some foot pain of late which may be gout, so I’ve been eating celery and drinking lots of water and taking ibuprofen, and not so much with the fancy ethanol preparations. However, reading up on the “disease of kings” reminded me of one of the best things I’ve made out of Imbibe – The Prince of Wales’s Cocktail. It’s got rye, maraschino, pineapple, and champagne, and is a lovely cocktail for celebrating things.

It’s not, as far as I can tell, a classic, though. Most recipes in Imbibe are based on the Jerry Thomas version, with comments like “Johson’s 1882 New and Improved Bar-tender’s Manual suggests…” or “The Only William uses…” suggesting that these were 1.) fairly common recipes, and 2.) living, evolving drinks that were sold, ordered,  drunk, and tinkered with. The only recipe citation for the Prince of Wales’s Cocktail is from an anonymous tell all by one of H.R.H.’s servants – Cocktailians has more quotes in this post on the eponymous cocktail – and Wondrich doesn’t say or even imply that anyone else ever drank it, which is a shame, because it’s delicious.

Recipe:

1.5 oz rye whiskey

1/4 tsp of maraschino

1 tsp sugar (the recipe from the biography specifies powdered, Wondrich suggests mixing it with a little water in the mixing tin, I cut out the middle man and used syrup instead)

dash Angostura bitters

Pineapple

Champagne.

Combine rye, maraschino, sugar, and bitters in a shaker with pineapple and plenty of ice. Shake “brutally” to crush the pineapple (per Wondrich), strain into chilled cocktail glasses and top with Champagne (the Professor suggests 1 oz, but also tells the reader to “use your judgment”). Garnish with a lemon twist.

A few notes – first, while I am sure that the spread of the Cocktail Renaissance has made many people aware of this, but when you see maraschino in a recipe, it means the clear liqueur made from sour cherries and their pits, from Luxardo (which seems to be preferred) or Stock (which seems to be entirely absent from liquor stores in Illinois). A bottle of it will run you $20-$25, and last quite a while, as it’s used in dashes and ounces. It’s delicious, btw, on fruit salad, or chilled and sipped on it’s own, and it appears adding some sweetness and an almond-y, fruity flavor in a number of classic cocktails.

Second, the champagne. While the Prince of Wales would obviously go for the real stuff, I am on a less regal budget, and generally like a nice, inexpensive metodo tradicional cava – meaning (of course) one where the secondary fermentation happened in the bottle you buy. Freixenet – you’ll know it when you see it, the black bottle on the shelf – does the trick nicely.

Third, the pineapple. I like to do the same frozen pinapple trick I do with my gin sours, and replace some or all of the ice with frozen pineapple. If you have some in your freezer, feel free. If you use canned, the suggestion I’ve seen a few places is to rinse the juice or syrup off before dropping it in the shaker.

But, please, do try this drink sometime. It’s quite wonderful.

 

Historical Artifacts

In Imbibe, Wondrich goes into the differences between our sugar and the sugar that would have been used in the 19th century.

Our loaf sugar comes in crumbly little cubes, rather than the dense, resistant loaves that it once did, and our white sugar is too dazzling white, relying on production methods not known to the ancients of mixology. On the other hand, our raw sugar, the nearest step down the scale, is too brown. – David Wondrich, Imbibe

I was kicking around the internet, looking at some reenactor sites, and found cone sugar – those “dense, resistant loaves” – on the website of a living history supplier. The whiteness of the sugar is still relatively dazzling, and the sugar nippers to break it down are $60, but I’m intrigued, and wonder if I couldn’t make do with a nice, clean pair of wire cutters instead. I’d like to make some nice, relatively authentic 19th century drinks, so maybe I’ll have to order some loaf sugar.

 

 

I rode an elephant!

At the Bristol Renaissance Faire, actually. I go with my mom and sister and girlfriend every year, because who doesn’t want to walk about looking at things, and then have a lunch of bagel dogs and mead and then watch some jousting? Also, because everyone I know is a giant nerd.

Anyway, I was thinking on the way back about what people in  the Middle Ages and Renaissance would really drink. Beer, obviously. Ale. Mead Wine, if they were lucky. Distilling comes in the scene in the 12th-13th century, as far as I know (I know Wondrich’s Punch has more on the early history of drinking, and I really must get a copy). Bitters and proto-vermouth show up in the 17th century, which we’ll take as the near end of what you’d see at a ren faire. Wondrich points out in Imbibe! that by the time of Samuel Pepys, early modern badass extraordinaire, you had gin and vermouth around in London, making a martini theoretically possible (I mean, it was genever, which tastes awful with vermouth, and probably something like sweet vermouth, but still).

At any rate, in that time, punch shows up. Punch is the direct ancestor of my favorite family of drink, the sour. It’s got spirits (arrack originally, then rum, then brandy, then whiskey, then gin, then combinations), sugar, citrus (all the ingredients of my beloved sour), water, and spices. The quintessential American one is the Fish House Punch, which I hope to someday make, after picking up some real peach brandy by hook or by crook. It’d be nice if they had something like that, even if it was brandy, lemons, sugar, and water ladled out of a big pot into plastic cups for $5 or $7. They do it at the faire with mushrooms boiled in garlicky broth already, which strikes me as at least looking towards authenticity, so why not punch? It’d be better than the $7 pre-made margarita I had this afternoon (although, really, when it’s 90-odd degrees and humid, I’m not going to say no to something limey and boozy and cold, I tell you what), more authentic, and a fun faire experience for everyone.

I doubt it’ll happen, but I can dream, yeah?