Learning Drinks by Category

The drink categories we make most nowadays include:

1. Shooters & Cordials
2. Rocks Drinks
3. Martini Types
4. Cream Drinks
5. Highballs
6. Collins
7. Classic Cocktails
8. Fruit Juice Based Drinks
9. Tropical & “Tall” Drinks
10. Frozen Drinks
11. Brandies, Cognacs & Liqueurs
12. Coffee Drinks
13. Wine & Beer Drinks

But over the past two centuries there were many other categories most of us don’t bother to learn about since there’s usually no call for them. In “The Savoy Cocktail Book” written in 1930 by Harry Craddock¹, the categories of that time included:

1. Non-Alcoholic Cocktails
2. Sours
3. Toddies ²
4. Flips ³
5. Egg Noggs ⁴
6. Collins
7. Slings ⁵
8. Shrubs⁶
9. Sangarees⁷
10. Highballs
11. Fizzes
12. Coolers
13. Rickeys ⁸
14. Daisies ⁹
15. Fixes ¹⁰
16. Juleps
17. Smashes
18. Cobblers
19. Frappe
20. Punch
21. Prepared Punch for Bottling
22. Cups

Back in those days nobody had television yet… so DRINKING was a fairly huge part of everyone’s daily life.https://vm.tiktok.com/Tc9Ljc/ Marvelous Guys.

Footnotes 👇

1. Harry Craddock (August 29, 1876 – January 25, 1963) was an English bartender who trained in the US and became one of the most famous bartenders of the 1920’s and 1930’s. He is known for his tenure at the Savoy Hotel in London, and for his 1930 book, The Savoy Cocktail Book.[↩]
2. What is a Hot Toddy? Extended Quote: “Ask the average person if they’ve ever heard of a Hot Toddy, and they’re likely to say they have. Ask them what a Hot Toddy is, and you may get a variety of answers. The cocktail doesn’t have a standard recipe. It needs to contain some type of liquor; a sweetener, such as honey or sugar; a warm base like coffee, tea, hot water or apple cider; and usually, lemon. The most common Hot Toddy recipe consists of bourbon, honey, hot water and lemon. The cocktail’s origins are unknown, but we do know that it is an old drink, believed to have been invented in Scotland in the 1700’s. The country’s staple liquor, Scotch, had a harsh smoky flavor that women were not fond of. The Hot Toddy may have been designed as a sweeter-tasting alternative for ladies.” From Make me a Cocktail.[↩]
3. A flip is a class of mixed drinks. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was first used in 1695 to describe a mixture of beer, rum, and sugar, heated with a red-hot iron (“Thus we live at sea; eat biscuit, and drink flip”). The iron caused the drink to froth, and this frothing (or “flipping”) engendered the name. Over time, eggs were added and the proportion of sugar increased, the beer was eliminated, and the drink ceased to be served hot. (Jerry Thomas, How to Mix Drinks (New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1862), 60.) The first bar guide to feature a flip (and to add eggs to the list of ingredients) was Jerry Thomas’s 1862 How to Mix Drinks; or, The Bon-Vivant’s Companion. In this work, Thomas declares that, “The essential in flips of all sorts is to produce the smoothness by repeated pouring back and forward between two vessels and beating up the eggs well in the first instance the sweetening and spices according to taste.” With time, the distinction between egg nog (a spirit, egg, cream, sugar, and spice) and a flip (a spirit, egg, sugar, spice, but no cream) was gradually codified in U.S. bar guides. In recent decades, bar guides have begun to indicate the presence of cream in a flip as optional. Wikipedia Flip Cocktail.[↩]
4. Eggnog, egg nog or egg-nog, historically also known (when alcoholic beverages are added) as milk punch or egg milk punch, is a rich, chilled, sweetened, dairy-based beverage. It is traditionally made with milk, cream, sugar, whipped egg whites, and egg yolks (which gives it a frothy texture, and its name). In some contexts, distilled spirits such as brandy, rum, whisky or bourbon are added to the drink. Eggnog is also homemade using milk, eggs, sugar, and flavorings, and served with cinnamon or nutmeg. While eggnog is often served chilled, in some cases it is warmed, particularly on cold days (similar to the way mulled wine is served warm). Eggnog or eggnog flavoring may also be used in other drinks, such as coffee (e.g. an “eggnog latte” espresso drink) and tea, or to dessert foods such as egg-custard puddings. Wikipedia EggNog [↩]
5. SLING History. “The word ‘Sling’ comes from the German ‘schlingen’, meaning ‘to swallow’, and Slings based on a spirit mixed with sugar and water were popularly drunk in the late 1800s. Slings are similar to Toddies and like Toddies can be served hot. (Toddies, however, are never served cold.) The main difference between a Toddy and a Sling is that Slings are not flavored by the addition of spices. Also, Toddies tend to be made with plain water, while Slings are charged with water, soda water or ginger ale. The earliest known definition of ‘cocktail’ describes it as a bittered sling.” Extended Quote, Difford’s Guide on Slings[↩]
6. Shrubs are essentially an old Roman method of preserving vegetables using Vinegar. However cooks discovered that there was more to simply preserving with this method. A basic shrub is going to be Vinegar, Sweetener, and Fruit (but it can also be vegetable). While the concept is fairly simple, the range of drinks and their complexity is amazing, and can fill an entire book on Shrubs (Author Michael Dietsch). For a quick background Michael has a great article on Serious Eats about How to Make Shrub Syrups[↩]
7. Sangarees, according to Websters Online Dictionary, Sangarees are “a spiced drink similar to sangria.” According to Collins Dictionary: “a cold drink of sweetened, spiced wine or other alcoholic liquor, served over ice” (so now it’s not just wine, but ‘other alcoholic LIQUOR’ over ice), and, according to the website Mix That Drink there’s a Rum Sangaree as old as the USA. Extended quote: “Recipes for the Rum Sangaree are many and varied. It’s a drink from the Antilles that’s nearly as old as the United States, and bartenders have been adapting and tweaking it ever since. Some call for light rum, others for dark. Some use lime juice, others an orange liqueur. Most call for Madeira or port, but you can also use a red wine you like. Some versions even call for bitters. This recipe is almost more a collection of suggestions than an actual recipe.”[↩]
8. Rickeys are built over ice and served in a highball glass. The recipe consists of 1 part liquor, club soda/seltzer water, plus about half an ounce of fresh lime juice (the juice from 1/2 of a lime) [↩]
9. Daisies according to Cocktail Monkey: The Daisy is a sour cocktail modified by a liqueur. You start with two parts spirit: one part sweet, and one part sour. The spirits are divided between the base spirit (Gin, Vodka, Whiskey, etc) and a liqueur. The ratio is 3:1 Spirit to Liqueur, so let’s say 1.5 oz Whiskey, 1 oz Cointreau. The amount of sugar or syrup you add will vary depending on the sweetness of the liqueur you’re adding. Usually an orange liqueur, but Harry Johnson (author of the Bartender Manual in 1934) preferred Green Chartreuse[↩]
10. A Fix is a classic style of drink that constitutes of a spirit, lemon juice, and some kind of sweet fruit served short.Drink Name: FIX – (Generic)Glass: Old-fashioned or RocksMethod: Shake and StrainGarnish: Fruit in SeasonIngredients:2 fl oz Brandy, whisk(e)y, gin, rum etc. 1 fl oz Freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 fl oz Fruit juice (often pineapple) 1/2 fl oz Rich Simple Syrup (2 to 1, Sugar to Water) [↩]

Footnotes 👆