Improved Whiskey Cocktail

It would be awfully hard to improve on this: The Improved Whiskey Cocktail.

Around the 1860s, a man named Jerry Thomas was seriously shaking up the bartending world. Working with bedazzled and bejeweled bar tools, Jerry was known for having a dramatic style. The Blue Blazer for example, the cocktail that really put him on the map, involved lighting ingredients on fire and then tossing them back and forth between two mugs. Shockingly enough, that flaming cocktail isn’t even what Jerry Thomas is remembered for. His book is actually what cemented his place in cocktail history. 

In 1862 the, “Bar-Tender’s Guide, or How to Mix Drinks” became the first published cocktail guide. Up until this point, bartenders had just whispered recipes and instructions back and forth, hoping that everyone’s hearing and memory was up to snuff. With his guide though, Jerry Thomas codified exact recipes and even organized them into categories including the Daisy, Fizz, Flip, Sour, and Smash. Of course, the man couldn’t just stop there. Thomas also included an appendix of “improved” cocktails that were his idea on how classic drinks of the time could get a bit of a facelift. It was kind of an arrogant move, but we can’t say he was exactly wrong. For the most part, the improvements included adding more liqueurs like absinthe and maraschino liqueur. Both liqueurs were exceedingly popular at the time as seen in the absinthe-laced Sazerac or the multiple maraschino mixtures like the Aviation and Last Word. And so Thomas thought he’d give the normal whiskey cocktail a boost with maraschino liqueur, bitters, absinthe, and just a touch of lemon. It’s certainly hard to argue with that improvement.