A Tale of 5 Cocktails
Illustration made for Ensemble Magazine by Ellie Gomez Price
5 Cocktail Recipes to Sustain You in the Post-Christmas Slump
Amidst COVID, one particular culinary phenomenon that has occurred is the rebirth of after-dinner cocktails at home. In film and television this tradition is of course, alive and well: who can forget Carrie and her cohort trading politically incorrect euphemisms across cosmos in her apartment in Sex In The City? Or the saucy flirtations exchanged across the liquor and cigars passed out by Carson after family dinners in Downton Abbey? I assume the most exotic libation served here would be gin, since the very utterance of ‘Pornstar Martini’ would be scandalous enough to send the Edwardians into fits.
But the fact remains that the closing of pubs, clubs and cocktails bars means that the British population can no longer entrust their sozzled evenings to professional bartenders, and has drawn cocktail culture back into the home to keep up lockdown spirits. Whether it’s increasingly strained Zoom cocktail evenings or a meticulously made G&T drunk alone in your onesie, a cocktail can often be the perfect thing to brighten your day.
Here are five recipes that are both delicious and complex enough to let you feel a fleeting sense of achievement in a sluggish pandemic-era world.
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The Bees Knees
So named for its use of honey syrup, The Bees Knees was apparently concocted by Margaret ‘Molly’ Brown in the 1920s. Margaret is in fact not only the accredited inventor of The Bees Knees, but famously survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. As Sipsmith London dubs The Bees Knees as ‘one of the best gin drinks ever created’, cocktail connoisseuse and Titanic-survivor Margaret would have quite the LinkedIn page if she were alive today. Furthermore, The Bees Knees is the perfect pandemic-era cocktail because it’s made from lemon and honey, allowing you to soothe your flu-like symptoms as you imbibe.
Recipe: Sipsmith London “100 Gin Cocktails”
Ingredients (Serves 1):
-50 ml of gin
-25ml of fresh lemon juice
-20ml of honey syrup (50:50 ratio of honey dissolved in water)
Instructions:
1. Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice
2. Shake
3. Strain and serve
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Piña Colada
As immortalised by the 1979 Rupert Holmes song, the Piña Colada is by no means new-fangled. However, I write specifically to dispel the myth that the Piña Colada must be confined to the realm of summer-holiday treats. After being served a Piña Colada by my bar-trained flatmates in the depths of a Scottish winter I can confirm that the fresh, fruity feeling hits the spot no matter the weather. Below is the official recipe, but for the best flavour blend fresh pineapple and mango yourself instead of buying the juice in the shops.
(Top Tip: If you like Piña Colada, you might also like getting caught in the rain)
Recipe: BBC Good Food
Ingredients (Serves 1) :
-120ml of pineapple juice
-60ml of white rum
-60ml of coconut cream
Instructions:
1. Blend everything with a handful of ice
2. Pour into a glass, add an umbrella or a cherry for the full serotonin-boost
Raw Raspberry Shrub
And now for the list’s mocktail, a fantastic legacy of Dry January made from raspberries, honey, apple cider vinegar and sparkling water. Although I was at first sceptical of the use of vinegar in a cocktail, the result is a truly fresh and zingy experience made all the more opulent by the mixing of raspberries with honey. Tell me that raspberries and honey doesn’t sound like something eaten by the Empress Cleopatra as she wallowed in her bath of milk.
Recipe: BBC Good Food
Ingredients (Serves 1):
-50g of raspberries
-10g of honey
-2 ½ Tbs of apple cider vinegar (white wine vinegar worked just fine for me)
-Several mint leaves
-125ml of sparkling water
-Ice
Instructions:
1. Put raspberries in a bowl and lightly crush them. Pour over the honey and put aside
(Official recipes say to leave overnight, but I never do)
2. Mix in the vinegar and then press the mixture through a sieve with a spoon or fork
3. Pour into a glass along with the mint, sparkling water and ice
4. Stir and garnish with any spare raspberries
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Appletini
The martini is one of the most famous cocktails in the world, most famously sloshed around a glass by James Bond as he seductively proffers a sexist joke to his leading lady. However, Bond’s favourite tipple got a little bit fruitier with the advent of the Appletini, or ‘The Adam’s Apple’ as it was advertised by Smirnoff in the July Issue of Playboy in 1972. Whilst Bond himself prefers the Vesper martini, the appletini has a star-studded history of its own.
Specifically, as the favourite drink of Alan Harper in Two and a Half Men, of Zach Braff’s character J.D. in Scrubs and of Facebook’s co-founders as depicted in The Social Network. After the premiere, the appletini was made the official drink of Facebook.
Recipe: BBC Good Food
Ingredients (Serves 1):
-50ml of vodka
-50ml of apple juice
-1tsp of lemon juice
-1tsp maple syrup
-Apple to garnish
Instructions:
1. Put everything into a shaker with ice until cold
2. Shake (not stir) and strain into a glass
3. Garnish with apple
Blood Orange French 75
Finishing this list with a bang, we have the Blood Orange French 75. This is a pointless, yet luxurious twist on the usual French 75 which usually uses lemon juice instead of blood orange. Featured in the 1942 classic film Casablanca, the original drink was created by British soldiers/ cocktail revolutionaries stationed in France during World War I when they combined their British gin with local French champagne. Typical boys, rather than naming their new invention for the country of its birth, actually named the French 75 after the French M187 75mm artillery gun. D’accord.
Recipe: Sainsbury’s Magazine
Ingredients (Serves 1):
-60ml gin
-90ml freshly squeezed blood orange juice
-15ml simple syrup or honey
-Sparkling wine/ prosecco/ champagne to top it off.
Instructions:
1. Pour the gin, orange juice and honey into a shaker with ice
2. Shake until cold and strain into a glass
3. Top up with sparkling wine/ prosecco/ champagne
4. Attempt a twist of orange zest if you feel mentally strong enough
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Lizzy Laycock is a fourth year student at the University of Edinburgh studying English Literature and History. She is a regular author at Ensemble Magazine, and you can find more of her writing here.