The Cosmopolitan “1934” is one of the classic drinks today. It is hard to imagine that it fell into oblivion. However, it was probably never really popular before, because before its rediscovery it can be documented in only one book. The history of its rediscovery is interesting, but also its embedding in the historical context.
50 ml Eversbusch Doppelwachholder
20 ml lemon juice
10 ml Combier Triple Sec
10 ml D’Arbo raspberry syrup
Preparation: Shaken.
The rediscovery
Jörg Meyer can best testify to the rediscovery of the forgotten drink. As he recounts, in 2006 he searched the internet every evening looking for classic drinks. By chance, he came across a site run by two people who went around New York drinking Martinis and then reporting on it. The site was called martiniplace.com, and the two people were Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller. Every evening, Jörg read their blog. There was also the possibility to donate an amount to the authors, and they promised to invest this money in Martinis and drink it away. Jörg liked that, so he donated a small amount of 10 or 20 dollars. Shortly afterwards, Jared wrote back thanking him for the donation, saying that Jörg had been the first and only person to donate anything so far. Jared’s email address ended in @mac.com. Apple also offered the so-called iDisk at that time. Anyone who had an email address with Apple was provided with data storage via the internet. This storage had a public and a non-public area. The public area was made up of “mac.com” and the email address, and so Jörg thought he’d take a look at what kind of guy he was exchanging emails with and what was in the public part of his iDisc. There Jörg found images of a book about gin, and he downloaded it. He thanked Jared very nicely and wrote that he had just downloaded the copies for the 10 dollars, which made Jared realise that these pages were freely accessible. Anyway, Jörg was allowed to keep these copies. The book was a volume on gin published by the Travelling Mixologists. Jared and Anistatia had found this book in a library in Manhattan. This had unfortunately burnt down, but fortunately the book and some other volumes in this series had been photographed on microfilm beforehand, so they had been preserved. Jörg was reading the book and he noticed the recipe for the Cosmopolitan. So there was a Cosmopolitan not only made of vodka and cranberry juice, but published much earlier, in 1934. To distinguish it, this drink is therefore called “Cosmopolitan 1934” today. Jörg made his find known and also informed Jared about it. [1] [4]
The book was part of a series that Jared later republished with Mixellany. In this series, seven volumes with different themes were published by Christopher Müller with the support of Al Hoppe Sr, A. V. Guzman and James Cunningham in 1934. They had previously written down the recipes they had prepared in 30 bars within the USA before Prohibition. In total, the collection contains 1374 recipes. The authors had known each other since 1906 and the books must have been quite successful because there was a revised new edition two years after the first publication. However, these volumes were forgotten and were now only in a few libraries. In 1995, they were discovered by Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller when they were doing research for their first book, Shaken Not Stirred: A Celebration of the Martini. They copied every page of the volumes available on microfilm. Then the copies were left for another ten years before they pulled out the gin edition again to do studies on the Martini. Independently of Jörg Meyer, they also discovered the Cosmopolitan, as we read in the preface of the new edition. [2] [9]
Cosmopolitan. American Traveling Mixologists, 1934.
Jigger Gordon’s Gin
2 Dashes Cointreau
Juice of One Lemon
Teaspoon Raspberry Syrup
Glass No. 4. Shake and strain.
The historical context
The Cosmopolitan is listed as a Daisy by the Traveling Mixologists. Daisies were usually made with grenadine syrup, but variants with raspberry syrup can be found occasionally and quite early, for example in Jacob Abraham Grohusko’s “Jack’s Manual” in 1908 or Jaques Straub’s “Complete Manual of Mixed Drinks” in 1913:
Gin Daisy. Jacob Abraham Grohusko, 1908.
Juice of 1 lemon
50% high and dry gin
50% raspberry syrup
Fill glass with fine ice.
Shake with shaker, strain in
glass, fill with siphon and
serve.
Gin Daisy. Jacques Straub, 1913.
Juice 1/2 Lemon.
1 Jigger Gin.
1/2 Jigger Raspberry Syrup.
In Goblet Fine Ice.
Fruits.
So basically, the Cosmopolitan is nothing other than a fancy Gin Daisy due to the addition of orange liqueur. The use of orange flavours is nothing new, because in 1908 Jacob Abraham Grohusko already used them in combination with raspberries for his Brandy Daisy and his June Daisy:
Brandy Daisy. Jacob Abraham Grohusko, 1908.
1 teaspoonful sugar
Juice 1/2 lemon
Juice 1/2 orange
Juice 1/2 lime
25% Raspberry syrup
75% brandy
Fill glass with cracked ice.
Shake and strain. Fill with
fizz water and serve.
June Daisy. Jacob Abraham Grohusko, 1908.
(In large glass.)
1 teaspoonful sugar
10 dashes raspberry syrup
Juice 1/2 lemon
Juice 1/2 orange
Juice 1/2 lime
75% high & dry gin
Fill glass with fine ice.
Shake well together, fill glass
with ginger ale. Stir with
spoon carefully and serve.
The addition of orange liqueur is also something that is used, for example, in John H. Considine’s 1912 Gin Daisy in “The Buffet Blue Book”:
Gin Daisy. John H. Considine. 1912
Prepare this drink in the same manner
as Brandy Daisy, substituting gin for
brandy.
BRANDY DAISY.
A large bar glass, half full of ice; 3 or 4
dashes of syrup, 3 dashes curacoa, 3 dashes
lemon juice, 1 wine glass brandy. Shake
thoroughly, strain in small thin glass, fill
up with seltzer or Apollinarls, and serve.
At this point, we do not want to go into how representative the aforementioned recipes are for Daisies. The point is rather to show that the use of raspberry and orange, although rare, can be traced back to before the “Cosmopolitan 1934”. The closest to the Cosmopolitan is the Leonora Cocktail, first mentioned by Jacob Abraham Grohusko in 1908:
Leonora Cocktail. Jacob Abraham Grohusko, 1908.
25% orange juice
50% Gordon gin (dry)
25% raspberry syrup
1/2 glass cracked ice.
Frappe, strain and serve.
But there is a connection to the leave-it-to-me cocktail that Harry McElhone published in 1926 in his book “Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails” on page 55. You replace the maraschino used there with a triple sec to get a drink comparable to the Cosmopolitan 1934:
Leave-it-to-me Cocktail. Harry McElhone, 1926.
1 teaspoonful of Raspberry Syrup, 1 teaspoonful
Lemon Juice, 1 dash Maraschino, 2/3 Gin.
The name
In the historical books, there are occasionally drinks with the name component “Cosmopolitan”. As an example, we refer to Adolphe Torelli’s “American Drinks Dictionary” from 1927. There is a “Cosmopolitan Claret Cup”, a “Cosmopolitan Delight” and a “Cosmopolitan Punch”. Hans Schönfeld and John Leybold also know of a “Cosmopolitan Cooler” in their Lexikon der Getränke.
It looks as if the Cosmopolitan “1934” is only listed by Travelling Mixologists, both in terms of content and name. In fact, we could not really find a comparable recipe in the other books. The situation is similar with the name. In the Travelling Mixologists, on the other hand, there is more than one Cosmpopolitan! In fact, there are 5 different Cosmopolitans there, whose recipes we have listed in our recipe collection, and which are all different from each other and use Rye Whiskey, Chartreuse or Sherry as the main spirit.
However, there are three exceptions. In 1927, a Cosmopolitan is published in Harry McElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails. In 1931, Dominique Migliorero published another Cosmopolitan, but with its combination of gin, vermouth and bitters, it is nothing other than a variant of the Martinez. Finally, in 1960, a Cosmopolitan appeared with cognac and red wine as the main ingredient.
The modern counterpart
For the sake of completeness, we should also mention the “other” Cosmopolitan, which was created in the 1990s and also achieved fame. Its recipe is given in the Cocktailian as follows: [3]
Cosmopolitan
4,5 cl citrus vodka
1,5 cl Cointreau
1 cl lime juice
3 cl cranberry nectar.
Preparation: Shaken.
This cocktail was very successful and is attributed to various people. We don’t want to analyse here whether it was created by Cheryl Cook, Toby Cecchini or John Caine. In any case, it was created when Absolut Citron came onto the market. [3] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Sources
- https://web.archive.org/web/20160516180409/http://bildungstrinken.com/27-gin-des-lebens/: Bildungstrinken #27: Der Gin des Lebens. alternativ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTNDpb1eQi8: Bildungstrinken #27: Der Gin des Lebens.
- American Traveling Mixologists (Charles C. [Cristopher] Mueller assisted by Al [Albert] Hoppe Sr., A. [Alfred] V. Guzman und James Cunningham): Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903-1933. Neuauflage der 1934 erschienenen Originalversion: The Complete and Annotated Edition, Mixellany Limited, London, 2009. ISBN 978-0-9821074-3-0.
- Helmut Adam, Jens Hasenbein, Bastian Heuser: Cocktailian 1. Das Handbuch der Bar. 2. Auflage, ISBN 978-3-941641- 41-9. Wiesbaden, Tre Torri Verlag, 2011. Page 390.
- http://bitters-blog.blogspot.de/2007/02/pioniers-of-mixing-gin-classic.html: Pioniers of mixing Gin – the classic cosmopolitain. By Jörg Meyer, 7. February 2007.
- http://www.barmixmaster.com/2008/05/sex-and-city-cosmopolitan.html: The Cosmopolitan, Sex and the City. By Brad Ellis, 24. May 2008.
- http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/cosmopolitan_cocktail/: Cosmopolitan (cocktail). By Barry Popik, 10. Januar y2005
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070707072947/http://www.ardentspirits.com/ardentspirits/Newsletter/vol7Issue06.html#cosmo: The Birth of the Cosmopolitan: A Tale of Two Bartenders. By Gary Regan and Mardee Haidin Regan, 6. October 2006.
- Gary Regan: The Birth of the Pinks. Being the whole and true story, or stories, behind the creation of the last true classic cocktail to be born in the twentieth century. Veröffentlicht in: Mixologist. The Journal of the American Cocktail. Band 2. ISBN 0-9760937-1-5. New York, Mixellany, 2006.
- https://web.archive.org/web/20080210014552/http://www.martiniplace.com/Blog/1AEE70EA-391F-4A39-B201-B71CFE82FC2C.html: The Real Cosmopolitan. By Anistatia Miller, 30. January 2007.
Historical recipes
1927 Harry McElhone: Barflies and Cocktails. Seite 82. Cosmopolitan.
Casting a side glance at the meal-ticket, O.O. McIntyre
concocts the “Cosmopolitan:” 1/6 Italian vermouth, 1/6
French vermouth, 1/6 Swedish punch, 1/6 Scotch whiskey,
1/6 Irish whiskey, 1/6 Russian vodka. And then the case
containing the corpse is submitted to the League of Nations.
1931 Dominique Migliorero: L’Art du Shaker. Seite 19. Cosmopolitan Cocktail.
2 traits d’Angostura Bitter, 1/3 Vermouth Italien, 2/3 Hol-
land Gin (Schiedam).
Bien glacer. Passer dans un verre à cocktail, servir avec
un zeste de citron.
(Recette de l’Auteur.)
1934 American Traveling Mixologists (Charles C. Mueller, Al Hoppe Sr., A. V. Guzman & James Cunningham): Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903-1933. Cosmopolitan.
Jigger Gordon’s Gin
2 Dashes Cointreau
Juice of One Lemon
Teaspoon Raspberry Syrup
Glass No. 4. Shake and strain.
1934 American Traveling Mixologists (Charles C. Mueller, Al Hoppe Sr., A. V. Guzman & James Cunningham): Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903-1933. Cosmopolitan.
2/3 Rye
1/6 Crème de Yvette
1/6 Italian Vermouth
Dash Grenadine and Picon
Glass No. 2. Stir.
1934 American Traveling Mixologists (Charles C. Mueller, Al Hoppe Sr., A. V. Guzman & James Cunningham): Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903-1933. Cosmopolitan.
2/3 liquor glass yellow chartreuse
1/3 liquor glass benedictine
3 lemon juice jiggers
1/2 lb. Sugar
1 quart red burgundy
Pint perrier
Mix as above. Decorate, etc.
Serve in bowls.
1934 American Traveling Mixologists (Charles C. Mueller, Al Hoppe Sr., A. V. Guzman & James Cunningham): Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903-1933. Cosmopolitan – Cold.
Jigger Rye
1/3 Lemon Juice
Dashes Cointreau and Port
Fill glass 2/3 ice. Stir. Fill split White
Rock. Decorate slice oranges, mint.
Glas No. 8.
1934 American Traveling Mixologists (Charles C. Mueller, Al Hoppe Sr., A. V. Guzman & James Cunningham): Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903-1933. Cosmopolitan – Hot.
Jigger sherry
1/6 Jamaica rum
3 dashes of lemon juice
Teaspoon sugar
Stir. Fill 2/3 hot water, slice round
lemon. Glas No. 15.
1960 Anonymus: Tout les cocktails et les boissons rafraichissante. Seite 37. Cosmopolitain.
1/2 Cognac
1/2 Vin rouge
3 traits Curaçao
2 traits Noyau de Poissy
1 tranche d’orange
explicit capitulum
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