Old-Fashioned

Taste

Two ounces of bourbon, one barspoon of demerara, two dashes of Angostura. The barspoon of demerara tastes of molasses and little else; the bitters are bark and clove against the corn. Rocks with ice. It sits.

History

The cocktail itself is spirit, sugar, water, and bitters, defined in The Balance and Columbian Repository on 13 May 1806. By the 1870s bartenders were dressing the Whiskey Cocktail with curacao, maraschino, and absinthe; drinkers who wanted the older formula asked for an old-fashioned whiskey cocktail. Robert Hess and David Wondrich, in The Oxford Companion, reject the Pendennis Club origin: Chicago papers were already talking about old-fashioned cocktails in 1880, a year before the Louisville club was founded. This menu pours two ounces of bourbon, one barspoon of demerara, and two dashes of Angostura, over ice. No fruit.

• The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, The Old-Fashioned Cocktail
• Difford's Guide, Old Fashioned cocktail history

Same shape, other bottles

The Old-Fashioned family, with the bottle that changed.

• Rum Old Fashionedaged rum for bourbon
• Scotch Old-Fashionedscotch and simple syrup for bourbon and demerara syrup
• Torontorye for bourbon
• Cornerstonecachaça and grenadine for bourbon and demerara syrup
• Improved Coctailrye and simple syrup for bourbon and demerara syrup
• Sazeracrye and simple syrup for bourbon and demerara syrup