Making the Original Old Fashioned

Max Miller explores the original 19th-century Old Fashioned cocktail recipes, revealing their history and evolution.

Key Takeaways

The original Old Fashioned was simpler, served without ice, and included nutmeg.
Rye whiskey was the preferred spirit in early 19th-century America, not bourbon.
Ice became common in cocktails only in the mid-19th century but was often strained out before serving.
The Old Fashioned evolved with added flavorings and garnishes over time.
Understanding the cocktail’s history enriches appreciation for its modern form.

What the video covers

The Old Fashioned cocktail's origins date back to the early 19th century and evolved from the generic 'cocktail' definition.
Max Miller recreates two 19th-century versions of the Old Fashioned to compare with the modern drink.
The original cocktail used rye whiskey, sugar, water, bitters (like Peychaud's), and nutmeg, served in a wine-like glass without ice.
Ice was rare and expensive in the early 19th century, so drinks were typically served at room temperature.
By the mid-19th century, bartenders like Jerry Thomas introduced gum syrup and ice, but strained the ice out before serving.
Fancy and improved cocktails emerged with added ingredients like lemon peel, curaçao, absinthe, and vermouth.
The Old Fashioned evolved with more flavorings and the use of ice, eventually becoming the modern cocktail known today.
Max discusses the differences in flavor, sweetness, and presentation between original and modern versions.
The video highlights the cultural and historical context of cocktail drinking in 19th-century America.
Recipes and historical references are provided to illustrate the cocktail's transformation over time.

Chapters

What is the original definition of a cocktail according to the 1806 source?

In 1806, a cocktail was defined as a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.

Why was rye whiskey used in the original Old Fashioned instead of bourbon?

Rye whiskey was the preferred whiskey in 19th-century America because bourbon was less popular at the time.

How did the use of ice in cocktails change over the 19th century?

Ice was rare and expensive early on, so drinks were served at room temperature. By the mid-19th century, ice became more available in saloons but was often strained out before serving.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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One of the most popular cocktails today has to be the old-fashioned. But I ask you, is the old-fashioned actually old-fashioned? Well, I am going to make two 19th-century versions of the cocktail to determine just how the original old-fashioned should taste. So,

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thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video as we make the real old-fashioned old-fashioned. [music] This time on Drinking History.

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So, today I'm going to be making two versions of this cocktail so I can show you a little bit of the evolution of the old-fashioned. I know what you're wondering, Max, why aren't you at your bar? You have a whole bar set up you

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could film this in. And the answer is it is absolutely covered in stuff, books and glassware and everything. And I determined that it is too hot in my house for me to clear it off. So, we're doing this in my kitchen. Anyway, we're

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going to start the history of the old-fashioned with the history of the cocktail because that's what an old-fashioned is. It's just short for old-fashioned cocktail. See, cocktail seems to have emerged in the late 18th century and back then it wasn't the

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cocktail or a cocktail, it was just cocktail. You had a glass of cocktail. And there are numerous mentions in documents from the late 18th and early 19th century, but in 1806 we get a definition when a reader of the

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political paper Hudson Balance and Columbian Repository asked what that drink was after it had been mentioned in an article. And the editor Harry Croswell responded saying cocktail then is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and

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bitters. Not very specific, but that's really what it was for the first half of the 19th century. The only real variation was what liquor was going to be in it because you could have gin cocktail or rum cocktail, brandy

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cocktail, or whiskey cocktail. And if it was whiskey cocktail, it probably wouldn't be bourbon. Bourbon was around, but it wasn't very popular. The whiskey to have in 19th century America was rye whiskey, so that is what I'm going to be

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using as I make this first original cocktail. So, take a small piece of sugar and set it in a cocktail glass.

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Now, you'll notice that this is not an old-fashioned glass like we think of today, a rocks glass. This is the old-fashioned cocktail glass, which was more like a small wine glass of sorts, and it would actually eventually

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become the martini glass. Then add a few drops of bitters on the sugar. You want enough that the sugar will fully absorb it. Now, the bitters used at the time were called Stoughton's bitters, and they date back to 1690. Unfortunately,

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they stopped being made in the late 19th century, so we're going to have to go with something else. You could use Bogart's or Angostura bitters or Peychaud's. All of those were around about 20 years after this mention of

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the cocktail, so I'm going to use Peychaud's. Then you want to muddle up that bitter-soaked sugar, and then all we do is add the water in the whiskey.

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I'm using WhistlePig Rye. It's similar to something that they would have had at the time, but the quantity is the question, and for that we have to look to a slightly later definition from 1833. Here Captain J. E. Alexander says

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to use a third of the spirit to 2/3 of the water. Add bitters and enrich with sugar and nutmeg. They put nutmeg on absolutely everything back then. If you watch Townsends, you would absolutely know that. Also, I think it's kind of a

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weird way to tell us how much water and liquor to use, 1/3 spirit and then 2/3 water. Just kind of an odd way.

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And in his book Imbibe, which is like the Bible of cocktails, David Wondrich said that this is probably about 2 oz of whiskey or whatever spirit you want to use to 3 oz of water. Now, we're going to give that a stir to let the sugar

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dissolve as well as it can. And then, per Captain Alexander's suggestion, we will put a scrape of nutmeg on the top.

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So, how is this different from a modern old-fashioned? Well, first of all, the glass.

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Second of all, no ice. So, it's going to be room temperature. And at this time, pretty much everything was drunk either room temperature or warm. There was ice sold, but it was very expensive and very hard to come by

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until commercial ice became available in the early part of the 19th century, but at a saloon, they didn't really have it for quite some time.

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We'll get to that. But, so it's room temperature. Also, you'll notice it's not so dark. Part of that's the Peychaud's. They're not as dark as the Angostura bitters. But also, there's just a lot more water

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in here because you don't add water typically to an old-fashioned today other than the ice. Anyway, let's give it a try. Oh, and then the nutmeg, obviously, very different.

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Mhm. Actually, that's really good. We got to start putting nutmeg on things, guys.

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It's just enough that it adds a different depth of flavor. Also, I like rye whiskey. I do like rye whiskey. It's a little more earthy? I don't know. Like hay, kind of a kind of a hay

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flavor, wet wet straw, instead of bourbon. Bourbon's fine, too, but you can use either one.

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I like that. And it's not too sweet. You know, some of the sugar is still at the bottom. And we'll get to what that sugar does get eaten. So, this is really the old-fashioned old-fashioned before it

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got all gussied up with things like ice. But, we will be using ice in the next version of the cocktail, but before we get to that, I think it's time for some history.

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It's the middle of the 19th century, and saloons are booming all over America, and bartenders are still making the same drinks that they've been preparing for the last 100 years. Mostly eggnogs, flips, juleps, mulled wines, toddies, cobblers, and punches. These are

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the kinds of drinks that make up the first bartender's guide written in 1862 by Jerry Thomas. I mean, when you think of a 19th century saloon, you don't typically think eggnog, but Thomas has a whole section of different eggnogs. He

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also has a huge section on different punches. Cobblers have a section, juleps have a section, and then he also devotes a rather small section to the cocktail.

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In his words, the cocktail is a modern invention, and is generally used on fishing and other sporting parties.

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Although, some patients insist that it is good in the morning as a tonic. That's actually when this would be drunk. This would be drunk in the morning when you woke up, you know, instead of like before dinner or

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something. So, times have changed. Anyway, Thomas's brandy, whiskey, and gin cocktails are not all that different from the one made a half century before, except that instead of sugar, he uses gum syrup, and instead of water, he uses

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ice, a relatively new product available in saloons of the time. But, even though it's made with ice, there is no ice in the drink when it's served. He has you strain out the ice, and then serve it in

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he says a wine glass, but it would have been a glass similar to this. Then, Thomas also includes recipes for what he calls fancy cocktails. These are the same, except that they add a little extra something in for flavor. One might

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have a lemon peel, another has a dash of curaçao, another a little bit of absinthe. Shortly after he publishes his recipe, other bartenders start publishing theirs for what they call improved cocktails. And these really ramp up the amount of these foreign

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liquors, things like absinthe and orgeat and curaçao and maraschino. Then there was a fortified wine which had come to America in the 1850s and it started to become popular in its own right by the 1860s, vermouth. By 1870 bartenders were

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using a lot of this in the cocktail, sometimes so much that it was half vermouth, half whatever spirit. And this is where you get the original versions of things like the Manhattan and the martini. But while these cocktails did

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become more and more popular, there were thos

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people take credit for it. There are hotels that say that they were the first one to make an is is a bunk because it was definitely around by 1880 when it appeared for the first time in writing that we know of in the Chicago Daily

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Tribune. And before long it was becoming the new fashionable way to drink cocktails. In 1886 the playwright and journalist Leander Richardson wrote that the modern cocktail has come to be so complex a beverage that people are beginning to desert it in favor of

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old-fashioned cocktails. [music] In the regular line of drinks coming under this name every bartender seems to have established his own private brand so that people who are in the habit of wetting their appetites by the use of the friendly cocktail never know

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beforehand what they are going to take into their stomachs as they pass from bar to bar. The old-fashioned cocktail on the contrary is nearly everywhere recognized as being made with a little sugar, a little bitters, a lump of ice,

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a piece of twisted lemon peel, and a good deal of whiskey. It has no absinthe, no chartreuse, and no other flavoring extract injected into it. But, even that is not really an old-fashioned because it now has ice and lemon peel.

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So, I guess you could say that the old-fashioned of the 1880s was actually a new-fashioned old-fashioned.

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And I would like to say that that's the end of it. That is the the drink that you would get today when you go into a bar, and it kind of is, but there's about another 100 years of

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evolution that this cocktail needs to go through first. See, bartenders are, by nature, tinkerers. And so, they always wanted to put their own spin on this drink, even though it was supposed to be pretty simple, just the old-fashioned.

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So, already by the time that we get the first printed recipe for something called an old-fashioned, that would be in the 1888 edition of Bartender's Manual by Theodore Proulx, the old-fashioned has already morphed into something else because his recipe has

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syrup and absinthe. [music] There are many recipes for old-fashioneds that appear in the next decades that are the simple kind, but there are just as many that have other liquors added in, and more often different [music] types of fruit. It

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started with lemon, then orange rind, and then whole slices of orange, and then cherries, and by 1917, people are also adding pineapple.

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According to many, what really did the old-fashioned in though was the poor quality of liquor during prohibition. In 1938, Westbrook Pegler lamented about that strange affectation cultivated in the time of prohibition to stifle the taste of the liquor called the

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old-fashioned cocktail, a fruit salad dunked in rye, and crowned with a sprig of turnip greens. Through the '40s, '50s, and '60s, lots of recipes appear.

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Some are the classic, and a lot of them, most of them, have some fruit, uh, sometimes so much that they are, like he said, kind of a fruit cocktail. And then they just kind of disappear. In the 70s

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and 80s, vodka and gin came in and became the more popular liquor to drink, and so whiskey drinks, including the old-fashioned, started to be seen as old-fashioned. Of course, now the drink has made a comeback. They're more popular than ever, as is whiskey,

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including rye. Rye has really made a resurgence in the last 20 years or so.

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Um and now I feel like when you do go to a bar and you order an old-fashioned, you're going to get something similar to what they were making at the end of [music] the 19th century, like this recipe from 1895. "Dissolve a small lump

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of sugar with a little water in a whiskey glass. Add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece ice, a piece lemon peel, one [ __ ] whiskey. Mix with a small bar spoon and serve, leaving spoon in the glass." So just like our

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early 19th century version, this one does start off with a lump of sugar, but it adds a little bit of water to dissolve it in.

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[music] And I'm not entirely sure why that is. I'm only guessing that once we add ice and make the liquor cold, it's going to be even harder to dissolve that sugar in it. Another difference is that instead of the original cocktail glass, the wine

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glass kind of thing, uh this does call for a whiskey glass, but it's not like the kind that you use for whiskey tastings. This type of whiskey glass was essentially a small rocks glass like we use today. Then we add two dashes of

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Angostura bitters and a small piece of ice. But exactly how big is a small piece of ice?

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Because even in that one decade, in the 1890s, people were arguing about how much ice to add to this drink. One description from 1890 says that a piece of ice as big as a thumbnail is added with a small piece of lemon peel. The

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drinker then pours his stint of rye whiskey into the glass and works his elbow. By the way, that is how it used to be done. The person ordering the drink would pour their own whiskey in.

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And I can't imagine any bar today letting you do that. Anyway, uh so that's one description saying a thumbnail-size piece of ice, basically a chip of ice. But then another description from 1899 says have lump ice about the size of an egg, but cut square

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or diamond shape as this tends to improve the appearance very much in serving. Now, this still isn't nearly as big as those massive cubes, the modern cubes that are like clear and everything that you'll get at nice bars. Uh but it

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is definitely more than a chip of ice. So, I am going with something kind of the size of a small egg, I guess. So, add the ice in and then make a piece of lemon peel and squeeze it over the top

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and drop it in. And then a [ __ ] which at this time was 1.5 oz of whiskey. Give it a nice stir. And he says to actually serve it with the spoon. And remember when I said I would tell you what

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happened to the sugar at the bottom? This is what happens. They would leave a spoon either in the glass or next to it.

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Um and they would be special old-fashioned spoons. They were called old-fashioned spoons. You could buy them. Um and then when you were done with the cocktail, you would spoon out the sugar that hadn't dissolved and just eat it as a little sweet treat at the

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end. So, I tasted the early 19th century and now it is time for the late 19th century, which I I think it's closer to the modern version. Cheers.

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It's good. It's a lot stronger than this one. You can see why just in the color. This one had a lot of water in it. This one has pretty much none, just a little bit of the ice, which

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uh is starting to melt and it'll be completely gone in a few seconds because it's freaking hot in here. Um Also, the orange peel is a different adds a very different uh layer than the nutmeg. I kind of like

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the nutmeg. Not going to lie. Uh I think that's an exciting flavor to add to whiskey. And it just kind of I don't know, it complements. They're both kind of warm warm flavors going together.

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I also feel like this is not as sweet. I feel like maybe the sugar didn't dissolve as well except I don't know.

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I'm not seeing Oh, yep. Nope. There's plenty of sugar there at the bottom. Um So, yeah, that's what people would use this spoon. I mean, I won't finish it right now in front of you.

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Okay, well, that's not really working. Anyway, they eat the sugar after they finish the cocktail. Now, there are other versions of the old-fashioned because there was the uh there was the whiskey old-fashioned but also then the gin old-fashioned and the the rum

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old-fashioned and the brandy old-fashioned. In fact, today, I think even now, if you go to Wisconsin and you order an old-fashioned, you'll often get brandy um instead of whiskey. But, I think if you went into a bar pretty much anywhere

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else and you ordered either a brandy or or a gin old-fashioned, they would look at you like it was your first time ordering at a bar. Anyway, these are two very delicious, very simple recipes.

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And so, they're they're both worth making just to kind of see the difference and see how a cocktail evolved over about a hundred years. And I will make sure to put uh the recipes as always up on my website

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Topics:Old Fashionedcocktail history19th century cocktailsMax MillerTasting Historyrye whiskeybittersJerry Thomascocktail evolutionclassic cocktails

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