Category: research

The Margarita, aka the Tequila Daisy

There’s been a bit of a hot debate going on for a while about constructing the perfect margarita. Tommy’s in San Francisco promotes their 100% agave margarita heavily, which uses agave syrup instead of orange liqueur to sweeten it. It makes sense; eliminating the orange aspect makes the tequila flavor shine through. But there’s a problem with this.

As you dive into the world of classic cocktails, you begin to recognize cocktail families. Some are familiar, some, less so:

Sour: spirit, citrus, sweetener, often egg white
Fizz: sour with a carbonated aspect (soda, sparkling wine, etc.)
Cocktail: spirit, sugar, bitters, water (dilution from ice suffices)
Improved/Fancy Cocktail: spirit, flavored sweetener, bittering component, perhaps an aperitif wine…

You start to recognize the patterns everywhere. You read the menu description of a bar’s “Apple Orchard” (Calvados, Grand Marnier, lemon juice, orange bitters) and you understand that it is just a modified sidecar. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It’s great to know these formulae. Understanding what makes a sour delicious means it’s easy to begin to substitute the base spirit for another, swap flavored sweeteners or acid, etc…

It also means it’s a lot harder to be surprised. So when the Tommy’s-style margarita started making the rounds in San Francisco, I was a little confused. Because despite David Wondrich’s article about the history of the tequila daisy, people still don’t seem to talk about the fact that “margarita” is the Spanish word for “daisy.” And a daisy is an entire class of cocktail, comprised of spirit, citrus and flavored sweetener.

The most common sweeteners for daisies, historically, are yellow Chartreuse, grenadine, raspberry syrup and… curaçao. Curaçao, the orange liqueur in said margarita.

I like a Tommy’s margarita. I do. Quality tequila, fresh lime and clean sweetener? Delicious. It’s just that I don’t think it’s actually a margarita. The curaçao (or whatever version of orange liqueur you use) is what makes it a margarita, aka a tequila daisy, and not just a tequila daiquiri.

For the record, here’s how I make a margarita. (Note that I offset the citrus with simple syrup. You can invert the proportions of lime and curaçao and eliminate the simple syrup, but this makes the drink a bit boozy for my taste.)

Margarita
1 1/2 oz 100% agave tequila
1 oz fresh lime juice
3/4 oz Cointreau or good curaçao
1/4 oz 1-to-1 simple syrup

‘Shake all ingredients over ice and strain into a double old-fashioned glass filled with fresh ice and rimmed with salt if desired, or strain into a chilled cocktail glass or coupe.

Citric Acid

Citric Acid

As I mentioned before, I treat my ingredients like a cook rather than a food producer. Yet when you get into food production, as I have been doing while expanding my Small Hand Foods syrup line, there are a few scientific things you must pay attention to.

Ph values are the level of acidity in a product. If you are going to seal anything in a jar or bottle, one of the ways to make it safe is to insure that the ph is 4.5 or lower. Botulism (botulinum toxin) thrives in a low-acid, oxygen-free environment. Once you expose a food product to oxygen, say, by taking a jar of jam off your shelf and opening it, keeping it refrigerated after opening prevents other bacteria from getting in there. All of this science must be applied when creating a new food product that you intend to bottle.

But food production folk are a funny lot. They know how to keep food safe, but they aren’t chefs. They want everything super scientific. I needed to lower the ph of my gum syrup to make it safe to bottle. And every single person I encountered told me to use citric acid. They said that citric acid is essentially concentrated lemon juice. So I bought some and tried it.

I don’t care what people say; citric acid is nothing at all like lemon juice. If you have access to it, mix a little in some water and taste it. Does it taste like lemon juice? Not even remotely. It tastes acrid and bitter with a dry, metallic aftertaste. Like nibbling on an unripe lime, with its peel, dipped in metal shavings and wrapped in brown paper. Quite frankly, I don’t want that in my syrup.

Actual lemon juice, contrary to what the food scientists say, contains citric acid, yes, but also malic, tartaric and oxalic acids, plus sugar, fiber and a trace of protein. And vitamins and minerals. Using lemon juice as an ingredient adds so much more than just a ph reducer. And adding enough to a bottle of gum syrup to make it safe adds less than a teaspoon per bottle: a couple drops per drink. In exchange I get the safety of the acidity without the metallic, bitter taste. It’s a fair exchange to me.

I’ve begun to look more closely at product labels and am stunned by the number of edibles that use citric acid. Out of all the varieties of hummus now sold at Trader Joe’s, only one uses actual lemon juice rather than citric acid. There are also so many products that seem to me to unnecessarily use an acidifier. Flavored syrups like Rose’s or Torani add citric acid because there is no actual juice in them, therefore nothing to bring the ph down to safe levels. But fruit juice is already acidic; I can’t see any purpose in adding citric acid to a drink or syrup already containing fruit juice. Yet there they are.

I do not claim that there is anything unhealthy or dangerous with citric acid. It is typically derived from lemon pith, although through a fairly refined process. My bias here is about flavor, and that I prefer to drink the way I eat, with a concentration on whole, real foods. In addition, to me lemon juice just tastes better. So that’s what I choose to put into my syrups. Food scientists be damned.

Grenadine

I make and sell a grenadine through my company Small Hand Foods. It differs vastly from what is currently on the market, and some people have been asking why.

First and foremost is the issue of taste. There are generally two kinds of grenadine on the market: ones that contain juice, like Stirrings and Sonoma Syrup Company, and ones that don’t, like Rose’s and Monin. Unfortunately, although the ones with juice in them are far tastier than their artificial addititive counterparts, when mixing them into cocktail, they simply don’t taste like pomegranate. There is the sweetness, of course, and the citric acid tartness, but none of the tannic juiciness I associate with ripe pomegranate.

I had always understood that grenadine was a syrup made from pomegranate and sugar, grenade meaning pomegranate in French, and granada in Spanish. But unlike other cocktail ingredients I can find almost no recipes for it in my collection of old cookbooks. In fact, the only recipe I found is in Home Made Beverages: The Manufacture of Non-Alcoholic and Alcoholic Drinks in the Household by Albert A. Hopkins, first published in 1900. And it is a rather unfortunate one:

Grenadine:
Extract grenadine, 2 oz.; liquid foam, 1 oz.; red fruit coloring, 1 dr.; syrup, 1 gal. Mix then add fruit acid, 2 oz.

(Syrup here would refer to simple syrup, made in this book by adding 2 pounds of sugar to each pint of water and heated until dissolved.)

So I guess we shouldn’t fault the modern artificial versions too much; they obviously are following a long heritage as well. But for me, I want a simpler product that tastes like its ingredients. I like to drink the way that I like to eat, close to the earth with minimal processing. I want to know my ingredients, how they were grown and produced, and if possible, the people that grew and produced them. So I knew that my grenadine was going to taste like pomegranate, and hopefully, make cocktails that tasted like there was pomegranate in them.

In a lot of classic cocktails, grenadine is called for in dashes, leading me to believe that it was used often for color. And if you look at a modern version of a common grenadine cocktail like a tequila sunrise, you will see that yes, indeed, there is a very noticeable color addition.

My problem is that if grenadine is made with just pomegranate and sugar, it wouldn’t be a bright red, it would be a darker, more wine-like color.

Perhaps we have gotten so used to artificial colors that something natural looks too muddy. When we serve a Shirley Temple at Heaven’s Dog we use Fever Tree Ginger Ale (as the Shirley Temple was originally made with ginger ale, not 7up or Sprite) and sink some Small Hand Foods Grenadine into the glass. Kids, and the occasional adult who order them, often look askance at the beverage until they take a sip. It’s really good, and tastes like ginger and pomegranate, like the actual ingredients. Unusual, yes, but only compared to the high-fructose corn syrup and FD&C Red #40 concoction we’ve become accustomed to.

There is a great discussion in the Spirits & Cocktails forum on eGullet about making your own grenadine. There are many, many recipes that contributors have posted, and every one of them is vastly superior to anything you can find on your typical liquor store shelf. However, one of the most interesting parts of the discussion is that some people add additional flavors to their grenadine, from vanilla to orange flower water to star anise. One post compared grenadine to pomegranate syrup like orgeat to almond syrup, as in, one is a pure flavor syrup and the other is a flavored syrup with pomegranate or almond as the base. Etymologically this is erroneous, of course, as grenade means pomegranate, and orge actually means barley, the culinary root of this syrup, which has evolved into its current form.

I tried adding flavors to mine. I love orange flower water, and thought vanilla, since it is often used in artificial grenadines, would make the syrup taste a bit more familiar. I even tried adding hibiscus, thinking it would donate a brighter red color and a bit of that lovely sorrel-like zing. But they all tasted weird to me. The vanilla made the syrup taste more like artificial grenadine, which was really unfortunate. The orange flower water tasted out of place and lended a body-product floral unpleasantness, the way too much lavender or violet can. And the hibiscus just muddied the bright acidity of the natural pomegranate.

So I came back to a pure pomegranate syrup. It’s dark and murky, like a reduced red wine sauce, and adds a lot of color to a cocktail. But it tastes juicy and rich, less sweet than commercial products, and still has a tannic bite that reminds you it comes from real fruit. And yes, it will add more flavor to your cocktail than the other stuff. But I think that’s the way it should be.

Sherry Wine Punch

I have a predilection for sherry-based cocktails for drinking on hot Sundays while relaxing with friends.

You may recognize the setting for this photo as the same as the one for my Italian Lemonade post. Last year I made a sherry and milk lemonade for exactly the same purpose: kickin’ it on the river the Sunday after a big party at my friend Jen’s farm in the Capay Valley. I figured, why break with tradition?

This time it was our friend Beth’s birthday. We ate under the stars and played in the river. I napped and read about pickles. We took eggs warm from the hens. Jen made pita from scratch. There was a pinata for the kids, and another one that was supposed to be for adults, but I never saw it get cracked. (What is in a pinata for adults? Weed and porn?) We slept under the stars. These parties are always fabulous.

So I needed a low-alcohol drink for the day after such revelry. Sherry-based drinks are ideal, and a brief search turned up a Sherry Wine Punch listed in Harry Johnson’s “New & Improved Illustrated Bartender’s Manual” published in 1888. It includes Orchard Syrup, an ingredient I have been working on for a while. This time I made it with extra lemon juice and more warm spices like cloves and allspice. It came out a bit too apple-pie-like, but the cocktail was still tasty. Next time I think I’m going to try Chinese 5-spice powder.

I made it all in a large jug for sharing, but here it is scaled down for one:

Sherry Wine Punch
3 oz amontillado sherry
1 oz orchard syrup
1/4 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz red wine

Stir sherry, orchard syrup and lemon juice together in a frappe glass, then pack crushed ice in to fill and stir briefly. Float red wine on top.

Enjoy!

Sirop-de-Groseille

As a pretty geeky bartender, I like to scan old bar books looking for drink recipes that call for obscure ingredients (see Capillaire and Orchard Syrup).

I first came across Sirop-de-Groseille in the Savoy Cocktail Book, although it’s also listed in Harry McElhone’s “Barflies and Cocktails.” It’s a red currant syrup, sometimes used as a substitute for grenadine or raspberry syrup. It’s often described as having a similar flavor to those, although I find it quite different, tannic and with an odd seedlike flavor, like biting into an apple seed. I think it is this quality that makes it a good match with kirsch, as kirsch is made by fermenting whole sour cherries including their pits.

Stone fruit seeds and apple seeds contain benzaldehyde, a poison related to cyanide (see The Trouble With Cyanide). The flavor is barely noticeable in fresh red currants, but when I cooked it into a syrup, the seedlike pungency is much more pronounced.

The first recipe I saw with this syrup was the Artist’s Special from the Savoy. I always like drinks that combine sherry with another liquor, and the nutty oxidation of the sherry tones down the tannins and seedy flavor of the groseille. Erik Ellestad of Underhill-Lounge describes his experience with this cocktail here.

Artist’s Special Cocktail
1 oz whisky
1 oz sherry
1/2 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz groseille syrup

Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

CocktailDB lists the Nineteen-Twenty, a cocktail with both groseille and kirsch. I love this combination, and I love this drink, although I prefer a variation made with genever instead of gin. My co-worker Jon suggested this as I was working out the drink, and I think it is just fabulous.

Dutch 20
1 1/2 oz dry vermouth
3/4 oz genever
1/4 oz kirsch
1/4 oz sirop-de-groseille

Stir and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

There is a French cocktail called The Rose, published in “Petits et Grands Verres” from 1927 that is essentially this drink without the gin. The name refers to the color the syrup lends the drink.

CocktailDB also lists a recipe for making the syrup:

Express the juice of small red currants, reds. Per quart of juice obtained, add 2 quarts of water and 3-1/2 lbs. of sugar. Dissolve sugar in water before adding the juice. Leave standing for several days. Filter or clarify and bottle.

I suppose you could put the currants through a juicer, but I find it easier to simmer them in water for about 10 minutes until the water is bright pink and the fruit looks anemic and sad. Press the whole mass through a chinois. You don’t need to de-stem the currants, either, just throw everything into the pot. And I don’t know why you would let it stand for several days, except to eliminate solids. I am far too impatient, so I let the whole mass drip slowly through a jelly bag. It still had a tiny amount of sediment, but not enough to be noticeable in a drink.

In any case, red currants are only available fresh for a short period of time every year. But the syrup will last for a while, so give it a try! Or come into Heaven’s Dog, for as long as my bottle lasts, of course.

Pisco Punch

Recently I had the pleasure of providing punch for a party hosted by the folks at Nirvino. It was a user appreciation party held at Le Colonial in San Francisco. I demonstrated making a punch in front of everyone, Martha Stewart-style, complete with swapouts and pre-measured ingredients. I also had two punches served at the onset for socializing. One of these was Pisco Punch.

Pisco Punch was a drink concocted toward the end of the 19th century by a barman named Duncan Nicol at the Bank Exchange in downtown San Francisco (where the Transamerica building now stands). Pisco, a clear grape brandy either unaged or aged in glass or stainless steel (which prevents color being added) is debated as being originally from Peru or Chile. Both countries have a history of making this spirit, although the methods of production differ slightly. Several types of grape are used, most often Muscat varietals. Pisco became popular in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, was widely imported, and was known for being quite alcoholic without tasting strong. Pisco punch was often compared to lemonade, but with “a kick like a mule.” Unfortunately the Bank Exchange closed its doors at the start of Prohibition, and cagey Mr. Nicol took his recipe to his grave.

What we do know are the ingredients of this drink: Pisco, lemon juice and pineapple gum syrup. Gum syrup (also known by its French spelling, gomme) was widely used back when bartending was a learned trade like any other, and bartenders passed on their knowledge in apprenticeships. They regularly made syrups, bitters, infusions and other ingredients for cocktails. Unfortunately, when Prohibition occurred, the men either had to find other work or leave the country, and a lot of culinary knowledge pertaining to drink-making was lost. So gum syrup largely stopped being used in favor of the far easier to make simple syrup. Gum arabic, resin from the gum acacia tree, is expensive and difficult to incorporate into a sugar syrup, and mixing water and sugar is, well, simple. But gum arabic lends a silky, viscous texture to cocktails that simple syrup does not.

Many modern bars, if they make a Pisco Punch at all, use a pineapple syrup made without gum arabic. And this, I think, is the problem with most incarnations. For a drink with only three components, one of which is the light and delicate Pisco, each one plays a very specific role. Without gum arabic, the drink is thin and rather flat. But with the added viscosity, it is round and flavorful, not rich per se, but full-bodied and satisfying.

Pisco Punch is not a true punch. (More on that later.) But it is well suited for being served as a punch, that is, in a large bowl for a crowd. Keep in mind, however, that dilution is a key component in this and any other drink, so you may want to add some water if the punch will be consumed rapidly. Otherwise let sit over large pieces of ice for a little while before serving, so the drink comes to an adequate balance.

Of course, it certainly can be served as a single cocktail, as pictured above. The proportions are absurdly easy, so scaling to any volume is simple. An added bonus is that when shaken vigorously with big chunks of ice, the gum arabic froths up to a nice foamy head and gives the drink a lovely white cap.

Pisco Punch
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz Pineapple Gum Syrup (this recipe is for Small Hand Foods syrup; if you make your own, add to taste)
2 oz Pisco (I use Marian Farms California-style Pisco. Neither Peruvian nor Chilean, this biodynamic farm in the San Joaquin Valley distills fantastic brandy in a copper pot still from Muscat and Thompson grapes.)

Shake vigorously with large chunks of ice and double-strain into a coupe. Garnish with a strip of lemon zest if desired.

The Trouble With Cyanide

How to Mix Drinks by Jerry Thomas is usually the first reference for anyone looking into pre-prohibition cocktails. But as a confectioner as well as a bartender, I am equally intrigued by the appendix added to this book, almost as long, titled A Manual For The Manufacture Of Cordials, Liquors, Fancy Syrups, Etc. Since I know that modern commercial orgeat is not made from actual almonds, I decided to see how historical recipes were made.

424. Orgeat (or Almond) Syrup.
2 lbs. of sweet almonds.
3i ounces of bitter almonds.
3 pints of fresh water.
6 or 6 1/2 lbs. of sugar.

Take your almonds (sweet and bitter) and drop them into boiling water. This blanches them, and they are easily skinned. Having peeled them, drop them into cold water, in which wash them; when ready put them into a clean mortar (one of marble is better than bronze), and mash them; next, squeeze in the juice of two lemons, or add a little acid, and, as you pound the almonds, pour part of a pint of clean water into the mortar; mash thoroughly, until the mixture looks like thick milk, and no pieces of almonds are left; then add another pint of the spring water. Now squeeze the white mash through a hair-cloth, or other good strainer: a common plan is to have a large strainer held by two persons; as they twist the milk may be caught in a clean basin; whatever of the almonds is left in the cloth put it back into the mortar, and mash it over again, adding a little of the spring water; then strain it, and mix with the former almond milk; this done mix it with your sugar (about 6 lbs.) which must first, however, be clarified and boiled to a ” crack” (see No. 17); whilst adding the almond milk let the pan of hot sugar be off the fire; when mixed give another boil up; then remove the pan from the fire, and stir the syrup until cold;* pour in a small portion of the tincture of orange flowers, or the least drop of the essence of neroly, and pass the mixture again through a cloth; give the bottles an occasional shake for a few days afterward; it will keep the syrup from parting.
*This is done to keep it from separating and splitting up after being bottled.

This is the first recipe I came across that calls for bitter almonds to augment the sweet ones. Now, I am a methodical cook; I will happily adjust recipes to suit my tastes, but I have to make the original to the letter the first time. How would you know how to adjust it without a specific frame of reference?

So apparently I needed some bitter almonds. Turns out, they are pretty much M.I.A., at least in the U.S. Even scouring food boutiques that specialize in European foods (I’m looking at you, Boulette’s), I was only able to find some specialty varieties of sweet almonds. Delicious out of hand, absolutely. But not what I was looking for.

So I started researching it.

(wiki)
The bitter almond is rather broader and shorter than the sweet almond, and contains about 50% of the fixed oil which also occurs in sweet almonds. It also contains the enzyme emulsin which, in the presence of water, acts on a soluble glucoside, amygdalin, yielding glucose, cyanide and the essential oil of bitter almonds, which is nearly pure benzaldehyde. Bitter almonds may yield from 4-9mg of hydrogen cyanide per almond. Extract of bitter almond was once used medicinally, but even in small doses effects are severe and in larger doses can be deadly; the cyanide must be removed before consumption.

So this explains why bitter almonds are so hard to find in the U.S. And it explains why modern recipes never call for them. Many websites detail that the cyanide is neutralized with cooking. Which is why, I suppose, we have been able to take delight in the lovely flavor that is the bitter almond, as it flavors marzipan, Italian and Chinese almond cookies, and anything else with almond extract in it, as the heat-processing of the extract makes the result safe for consumption.

It also explains why old recipes call for whole bitter almonds, but always within the context of a highly cooked product. The cooking was necessary to neutralize the poison.

Now, in my attempt to make the original recipe, I was stymied by the lack of available bitter almonds. However, other stone fruits also contain benzaldehyde in their kernels, including peaches, cherries and apricots, as well as apple seeds. I know that apricot kernels are available in some herbal pharmacies, as they are sometimes used as a natural cancer treatment. A controversial medicine called Laetrile, first sold in the United States in the 1960s, was touted first as a cancer cure, then relegated to treatment status, and ultimately claimed to be only a preventative measure. The USDA stopped its import and sale in 2000, although there are ways to get around this ban. Laetrile is made from amygdalin, a substance found in, you guessed it, apricot kernels.

So I headed to my local herbal-specialized grocer and indeed, found a big jar of apricot kernels. They were unblanched, so I had to go through the hassle of blanching them myself, but ultimately I had enough to make the recipe. I even went so far as to clarify my own sugar using egg whites, a procedure I do not recommend unless you are happy having to forever afterwards light your stove burners with a lighter because you have completely killed the pilot lights.

I made the modern concession of using a food processor instead of a mortar and pestle. But when I boiled the whole thing with the quantity of sugar specified, it was so thick that by the time it cooled it had to be spooned from a jar. It reminded me of pomade, or the solidified part of a can of cream of coconut. And after a couple of days, the entire thing crystallized and had to be chipped out of the jar.

Flavor-wise, however, it was delicious. The apricot kernels had imparted a profound bitter almond flavor, much like almond extract. And the richness that came from using actual almonds was apparent. The fat and protein in the mouth make for a depth of flavor and texture that simply is not possible when just using sugar syrup and almond extract.

Obviously there were problems. I can’t see having to spoon a mixture into a cocktail shaker a practicality at a bar. But this, combined with what I learned from the Art of Drink recipe, gave me a great foundation for attempting to make an orgeat I feel will work in a modern bar but be made in an old-world sensibility, with real, whole ingredients.

Blog-by-Proxy

The French 75 is one of the great classic cocktails. Spirit, citrus and sugar, the makings of a great sour, but topped with Champagne. Awesome.

There’s significant debate over the origins of this cocktail. The story I heard (and I know it’s romantic bullshit) is as follows:

Some English soldiers were holed up in a lemon orchard in the French countryside during World War I. It being France, there was plenty of cognac to be had, but alas, straight cognac was too strong for the soldiers. So they mixed it with lemon juice from the orchard and sweetened it with sugar from the pantry, then topped it with Champagne. It being France, of course, Champagne is obviously drunk like water. When the soldiers returned to England they made the same drink with their native spirit, gin.

There are some other stories out there, mostly justifying the use of gin. The truth is, I prefer the cocktail with cognac. The wood-age counteracts the high acidity of the other ingredients, and the Champagne makes a brilliant integrative turn. It both lightens the texture and rounds out the ascorbic acid of the lemon with malic and/or lactic acid, providing a greater range of acidity and hitting your mouth in more places. With gin, the drink is mostly high notes. When you substitute cognac, the charred wood the spirit is aged in adds caramel and sugar, lending a depth and rich earthiness you just don’t get with gin.

My friend and co-worker Kent shares my high esteem for the French 75. So much so, in fact, that he has embarked on a “75 French 75s” series. Spirit, sweetener, citrus and sparkling are all interchangeable in this quest. Kent is an outstanding bartender, using a restrained hand and acute sense of balance, and every iteration I have tried has been stellar. He even made one with my Orchard Syrup. (I should probably make some more of that…)

“75 French 75s” may eventually be a coffee table book. I think Kent should also start a blog (but I’m biased). But as neither of those things exists yet, in the interest of furthering awareness of delicious drinks and the folks who make them, I’m going to post his creations here. So stay tuned.

For an initial exploration, here is my basic French 75 recipe:

French 75
1 oz cognac
1 oz fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz 1-to-1 simple syrup
Champagne or other dry sparkling wine
Stir cognac, lemon and simple over ice in a bucket glass. Top with champers and stir again. Garnish with a lemon peel.

And here is one of Kent’s versions:

Italian 75
1 1/2 oz Jacobo Poli Pinot Noir grappa
1 oz fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz 1-to-1 simple syrup
Billecart Salmon Brut Rose Champagne
Shake grappa, lemon and simple in mixing tins. Double-strain into a flute. Top with Champagne.

Commercial Orgeat

As I mentioned before, I love the orgeat recipe on the Art of Drink by Darcy O’Neil. It is light and milky and lush. I could practically drink it by itself. But why is this recipe so vastly different from all the orgeat on the shelves?

Commercial orgeat is slightly cloudy, and may or may not louche when added to water. Louching is the process whereby certain oils in an emulsion are destabilized, and come out of solution into suspension. The best-known example of this is adding water to absinthe, although it will occur with any pastis (and any spirit with a certain amount of essential oil in it, like Cointreau or Blue Gin). The oils in the product are soluble in sufficient ethanol, but when the proof is brought down with the addition of water, the oils pull out into suspension, thus giving the liquid a cloudy appearance.

What is in commercial orgeat? How does it differ from Mr O’Neil’s recipe? Here I’ve listed brands of orgeat that are common in bars, plus their ingredients:

Torani: Pure cane sugar, water, natural flavors, fractionated coconut oil, ester gum, citric acid, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate

Monin: pure cane sugar, water, natural almond flavor

Trader Vic’s: high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, cloud (water, acacia gum, medium chain triglycerides, glycerol, ester of wood rosin, brominated vegetable oil, citric acid, sodium benzoate), propylene glycol, sodium benzoate (a preservative), natural and artificial flavors

Fee Bros.: corn sweeteners, sugar, water, natural and artificial flavor, citric acid, less than 1/10 of 1% benzoate of soda as a preservative, propylene glycol, xanthan gum, gum acacia & glyceryl abietate

1883: sugar, water, glucose-fructose syrup, natural aroma including natural almond extract

Sonoma Syrup Co. (called Vanilla Almond syrup): cane sugar, water, vanilla extract, natural almond extract, orange flower water, citric acid
(I wouldn’t really call Sonoma Syrup Co.’s syrup orgeat, but they are a well-respected locally-based “natural” syrup maker, so I wanted to put them in anyways. It’s super vanilla-y, thus taking it out of the realm of typical orgeat.)

So, the Torani and Trader Vic’s brands have clouding agents in them: fractionated coconut oil in the Torani and the “cloud” concoction in the Trader Vic’s. None of them have actual almonds in them. Assuming almonds donate fat to an emulsion, this would provide for a louche effect. If you eliminate the almonds but still want the visual, you’re going to have to get some oil in there. Thus the coconut and vegetable oils added. But when mixed with water, the louche is actually pretty subtle, nothing at all like absinthe or other pastis.

Call me a purist, or a snob, but I think that I’d rather use actual almonds and the effect that they create rather than try to approximate the effect with ingredients that have no other purpose in the syrup.

I feel the need to add that I have had bartenders in bars I greatly respect on both coasts swear up and down that 1883 is amazing, and ostensibly different and superior to other brands. So I ordered a bottle. And I’m sorry to say I was sorely disappointed. It tasted just like thickened sugar syrup with almond extract added, which is exactly what it is. And after tasting every commercial product I could get my hands on, including one from a deli in New York that came highly recommended, I’ve got say that they all pretty much taste the same. Certainly, the brands with artificial ingredients taste more processed than the others. But they all taste kind of forced, in that overwhelming almond extract kind of way. In pastry, almond extract is used to bolster the flavor of an almond confection, like in amaretti or almond cake. But here it’s as if we are trying to be convinced that the flavor of almond extract alone is the actual flavor of almonds. And it’s not.

Now, forced to choose, I’d rather consume something like Monin or 1883, simply because they have fewer ingredients and no artificial preservatives. But really, I’d actually rather consume something from real food.

Purist, or snob…

Orchard Syrup

I came across orchard syrup as a cocktail ingredient for the first time while browsing the CocktailDB application on my co-worker’s iphone (it was a slow night). It was in a cocktail called a St. Croix Crusta and is listed in Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual, in the crusta as well as several other cocktails. Additional research revealed it also listed in Here’s How by Ross Bolton.

Usually when I find an ingredient I’m not familiar with I can find a recipe for it in How to Mix Drinks: A Bon Vivant’s Companion, The Royal English and Foreign Confectioner or online on a site such as Chest of Books. But I can’t find anything about orchard syrup. It’s making me a little crazy.

On DrinkBoy there is a thread speculating on the possibilities of what this ingredient is. One plausible theory is that as orchards in America in the early part of the century tended to be apple orchards, orchard syrup was probably derived from apples.

I like this theory. My only question is that there are plenty of recipes from that era for apple syrup, so how would orchard syrup be any different? Erik from Underhill Lounge sent me this recipe. It’s for a Dutch apple syrup made by greatly reducing apple syrup with some spices. And here I hope is the difference: while apple syrups tend to be sugar and water syrups cooked with apple pieces, this is only apple juice and sugar, resulting in (I imagine) a far more concentrated flavor.

It turned out delicious, really lovely and apple-y but not oxidized or caramelized, which are always risks when reducing fruit juices. And the spices are subtle enough that they add to the cocktail without overtaking it. I’ve been making St. Croix Crustas for any bar geeks who happen to come in. And I call it orchard syrup. But feel free to correct me (bring research)!

One note about recipes containing dashes as ingredient measurements: while a couple dashes of concentrated aromatic ingredients like bitters or absinthe is sufficient to add flavor to a cocktail, I simply cannot taste dashes of more delicate ingredients like citrus juice or syrups. I use a barspoon, or 1/2 tsp.

St. Croix Crusta
1 dash bitters (Ango works fine; it originally called for Boker’s)
1 barspoon lemon juice
1 barspoon maraschino liqueur
1/4 oz orchard syrup
1 1/2 oz white St. Croix rum (I used Barbancourt white, as it’s what I had available)

Using a vegetable peeler, peel a lemon in one long spiral. Run a cut lemon around a pony-style glass fairly far down the edge and dip in sugar. Place the entire lemon peel in the glass, maintaining its shape as best as possible. Shake all ingredients (or stir; I’m not arguing over this one) over ice and strain into the glass.

My friend Nadia, enjoying the crusta.