I tend not to be a big fan of sugar, salt, spice, etc. on the rim of a cocktail glass when I’m drinking a cocktail. I don’t get all upset about it if I have such, cause drinking oughta be fun, not upsetting, but it’s not my favorite, cause really, I wanna taste the drink and its ingredients and not be overwhelmed by whatnots on the glass. I realize others take a different take on this, and that’s just okay with me! Again, drinking oughta be fun! However, there is one (maybe more, but that wouldn’t make such a good transition) drink I am okay with a sugared rim on, and that’s Mrs. Solomon Wears Slacks. Because it’s from Crosby Gaige’s Cocktail Guide and Ladies Companion, published in 1941, and I don’t want the ghost of bon vivant Gaige haunting me. Unless ghosts are all-of-a-sudden able to become corporeal enough to shake cocktails; if that’s the case, haunt away Mr. Gaige! And start the haunting by serving up this amazingly-named drink.
Mrs. Solomon Wears Slacks
Ice cubes
Super-fine sugar
2 ounces brandy
1/2 ounce orange curaçao
3 dashes Angostura bitters
Lemon twist
1. Put a good helping of sugar on a saucer. Wet the outside rim of a Champagne flute (I used a lemon slice, but you could also rotate it through water on a saucer–just don’t get any water in the glass). Carefully rotate the outside rim of the glass through the sugar–but you don’t want to get any sugar on the inside.
2. Fill a cocktail shaker or mixing glass halfway full with cracked ice. Add the brandy, curaçao, and bitters. Stir well.
3. Strain the mix into the flute. Garnish with the lemon twist. Now, dance!
We’ve had a number of brandy drinks here lately (just see the last few posts!), and they reminded me of the below quote from the George Harmon Coxe book Eye Witness, featuring photographer/mystery-solver Kent Murdoch, who can throw punches, talk smoothly with the ladies, drink it up, and snap memorable pics. All at once! Even with all that, I wouldn’t say George H. Coxe is like at the top echelon of Spiked Punch posted authors, but he can spin a swell yarn, as they say. And one with brandy!
Murdock asked Leone if she would have a brandy. She thought a B&B would be fine so he had the brandy. Only then, when the waiter took the other things away, was Murdock able to sit back and give his attention completely to his companion.
‘That was all right,’ he said.
‘Marvelous.’
She was watching him now, the faint flush in her cheeks giving her a new radiance that was attractive and promising. The cocktails had apparently done their work well for she seemed relaxed and at ease, content; it seemed to leave the next move up to him.
The name of this long-a-Spiked-Punch-favorite drink means, or so I was told, I think of you always. Which is about the sweetest sentiment one could echo, making this a drink ideal for both romance, but also when thinking about and toasting departed loved ones, and also for having when you’re petting a beloved dog. Considering the sweetness of said sentiment, the drink itself can be a tad sweet – if your love is worried about a cavity, then you could omit the simple syrup in the below, or drop it to 1/4 ounce. Actually, I’d try that first, cause I do think the smooth simple helps to make the brandy and world-renowned-now beauty Aperol cuddly together nicely. Add an orange slice and boom, deliciousness. Drink it up, and I’ll be thinking of you.
Ti Penso Sempre
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounces brandy
1 ounce Aperol
1/2 ounce simple syrup
Orange slices, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the brandy, Aperol, and simple syrup. Shake well.
2. Strain the mix into a cocktail glass, garnish with orange, and think lovely thoughts.
Sometimes, you need a quick bracer in the morning of a particularly stressful day, one you know might test your, let’s say, patience a bit (side note: do people still say “bracer” when referring to drinks? If not, why not, cause it’s an amazing word. If you start doing it now, bringing it back, so to speak, I’m sure it’ll catch back on, cause you’re cool, right? Right!). For me, today I think is that day, and so I’m starting with one of my favorite bracers, the one named after the fair city of Baltimore. It’s got the nice smooth kick from brandy, a swell helping of anisette (which goes well with brandy historically) that adds loads of flavor and tones down that brandy umph a bit, and then an egg white, which not only makes it frothy smooth but brings us back to this being an egg-cellent (hehe) morning drink, one that’ll brace you up for whatever the day holds. Unless the day holds driving large equipment or flying a plane or doing surgery. Then maybe stick to coffee.
Baltimore Bracer
Cracked ice
1-1/2 ounces brandy
1-1/2 ounces anisette
1 egg white, preferably organic
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with cracked ice. Add the brandy, anisette, and egg white. Shake well.
Whether its Mother’s Day, or graduation, or Memorial Day, or just a darn good day for a party, many occasions for serving a group of people drinks are coming up. Make it easy for yourself and pick up a punch bowl and punch it up. That is, if you don’t have a punch bowl already, but maybe you do? I was on the radio (you kids might not remember such) once, on a call in show, talking about having two punch bowls, one fancy, one not, and a caller called in to say they had eleven punch bowls! Eleven! Now, that person knows how to party. Not saying you need eleven, but one or two, yes. And then, you can make this punch in one of them. It sounds like a Shakespeare character, and admittedly hearkens back in a way back-a-ways, with a hearty red wine base (like a Cabernet or other robust red wine) mingling with some juice (grape, here), and sweetened with some simple syrup. But then! We are also adding mysterious French herbal liqueur Bénédictine, and a heaping helping of brandy, plus club soda (which helps lighten it up, and make it okay for brunching as well as later affairs). The first item in that list really gives this punch an intriguing personality, and one that is sure to make your late April, May, and June events memorable (as well as events in the other nine months, to be clear). Punch it!
1. Add the block of ice to a large punch bowl, or fill the bowl halfway full with ice cubes. Add the brandy, grape juice, Benedictine, and simple syrup. Stir well.
2. Add the red wine to the cast, and stir again.
3. Smoothly add the club soda, and stir a final time (or maybe a few final times—you want to get it good and combined). And a handful or two fresh red seedless grapes, if you want. Sometimes I feel the grapes, sometimes I don’t. I’m weird. Serve in punch glasses. Or with straws.
Though we’re well past Valentine’s Day, really, if you’re a perfect paramour or partner, you should be showing the love every day, right? Right! And what’s the best way to show the love? Making that favorite person of yours a dandy cocktail, perhaps one a bit sweet to show you think they’re the sweetest? Too much? Well, it makes for an interesting intro idea to this cocktail, which isn’t overly sweet, mind-you, thanks to the bountiful base of brandy (the most under-utilized base spirit). One top of which are two other dancing partners that might be a stitch sweet, but also deliver lovely (!!) flavors: Navan vanilla liqueur and the Italian charmer Dumante Verdenoce pistachio liqueur. Those three alone play together quite cozily, but adding an egg white, as we do here, gives a wonderful silky mouthfeel (as they say), one that’ll have you and yours canoodling happily any day of the year as you sip it.
I’ve had a few Cyril Hare Cocktail Talks on the Spiked Punch in the past, as I’ve slowly been filling out my collection of his books. If you don’t know (and you should, as he should be more well-known today), he was an early-to-mid last century English writer, as well as a barrister and judge (the latter under his real name of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark). He was perhaps mainly known for his books featuring Francis Pettigrew, a not-super-successful barrister who tends to helps solve the mysteries via an intriguing point of law or two – Hare also wrote other mysteries, with the same precise language and plots combined with local color that I like. Good stuff! Tragedy at Law was the first, thought weirdly I hadn’t read it until recently. Many call it the best mystery set in the legal world, and it could be, at that. Not all over-the-top as some modern books, but well-paced, keeping you thinking, and at the same time learning about the British judicial system at the time, in a way that’s never dry – except for the dry wit! And a little brandy anxiety.
For the Shaver was not laughing with the others. More, he was not listening. He was sitting glumly regarding the tablecloth and from time to time helping himself to another liqueur brandy from the bottle which had somehow become anchored at his elbow. Characteristically, Pettigrew’s first anxiety was for the brandy. “There’s not too much of that ‘Seventy-Five left,” he reflected. “I must remember to tell the Wine Committee at the next meeting. Of course, we’ll never be able to get any more as good as that, but we must do the best we can . . .”
Well, what can you say about Charlie Dickens that hasn’t already been said – much of it in the highly-regarded biography Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin, which I’ve been reading, and which is very well done, very researched, very well-written, and very in-depth. Reading biographies isn’t always my thing, I’d rather usually just read the work, but I’m a fairly decent Dickens-head (heck, read all the Charles Dickens Cocktail Talks to see), and had just visited the awesome Charles Dickens Museum in London, so thought I’d take the bio plunge. And I’m glad I did! But also a bit sad, because the more you learn, sometimes it’s too much. And though it’s a great bio book, she didn’t mention the greatest of all Dickens characters, Diogenes the dog, so that was a big black mark. But balanced by the below quote, where she’s talking about Dickens the party thrower, parties which certainly seem ones I would have enjoyed, and where Fortnum was involved (I’m a big Fortnum & Mason fan as well as a Dickens fan).
Accounts of his entertaining there, over which he sometimes presided in a velvet smoking coat, suggest that there was a high consumption of iced gin punch and hot brandy punch, much smoking of cigars, and delicious food brought in from Fortnum’s – pickled salmon, pigeon pie, cold meats, and hot asparagus – oysters from Maiden Lane and sometimes a baked leg of mutton stuffed with veal and oysters, a dish of his own invention.
