Five... classic cocktails born in London
Icons only
Hi and welcome to your weekend newsletter…
This edition’s an homage to the classic cocktails invented in London, of which there are far more than I realised.
The Vesper
You might not have heard of Gilberto Preti, the barman thought to have created the Vesper, but you'll almost certainly know the crisp, sharp take on a martini’s most famous fictional drinker. Preti was working at DUKES Bar in the early 1950s when he invented the drink, for author Ian Fleming.
Fleming was so impressed with the cocktail's suave cred that he wrote it into Casino Royale, with 007 explaining to a barman how to make it: "Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet [now called Lillet Blanc]. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?"
Clarified Milk Punch
‘…To a gallon of milk add a little cinnamon, cloves, mace, lemon and orange peel, a pint of brandy, a pint of rum, plenty of orange and lemon juice, and sweeten to the palate. Then whisk with it the yolks and whites of eight eggs, put it over a brisk fire, and when it boils let it simmer ten minutes; run it through a jelly bag till quite clear, put it into bottles, and cork it close…
N. B. The rum and brandy should be added when the milk is cleared…’
— by John Mollard, from The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined, from 1802
Clear as glass, but confusingly creamy-tasting, the Clarified Milk Punch was invented by playwright and royal spy Aphra Behn, a woman who I’d never heard of before researching this, and I now realise deserves a Five Things newsletter, and, also, a big-budget Netflix miniseries.
In an article for Class, Jane Ryan explores the history of the cocktail, and the reasons it’s assigned to Behn — the tl;dr: if she didn’t invent it herself, she certainly adopted it so hard that she became inextricably associated with it by her peers, in a triumph of personal branding.
The first written recipe for it that survives is thought to be decades later, from Mary Rockett in 1711: ‘…Add 2 Quarts of new milk Scald hot stirring the whole time til it crudles [sic] grate in 2 Nutmegs let the whole infuse 1 Hour then refine through a flannel bag…’