Here’s my convention plus a few additions. I’ll explain the associations and the creative process so you can get a better idea of what you’ll need to do when memorizing recipes using more advanced mnemonic techniques than first letter of each word ingredient list associations.
Early PS – I urge you to try substituting your own images for your own memorization to make whatever you need to make more memorable memorable. MINE work, and SHOULD work for you, but you may come up with something better – USE WHAT WORKS. Post it here! I’d love to know what it is, so share. 🙂 (I now return you to the previously scheduled post.)
Dry Vermouth should be simple. As a matter of fact, this whole drink should have been simple and easy to recall but for me it wasn’t. It keeps slipping. So for this drink Dry Ver(mouth) becomes driver. Taxi Driver – Robert Dinero.
The NYC Checker Cab company used to have these porcelain cows (beef) painted taxi cab color, with checkers and horns. So now they’re both in there on the tie (which means “one” in the Major System, and I use it to mean one as well here). The tie acts as a container which contains both dry ver (dry vermouth) and beef (beefeater) – 1 oz each.
NOTE HERE — I can also use a “cattle driver” (cowboy), a cow driving a car, Robert Dinero wearing a set of cattle horns, or any number of other things to remind me of beefeater and dry vermouth — hell, I could just put a picture of a Martini on the tie – maybe even stick a clover in it for “Clover Club”.
The clover (clover club) tie wearing guy has a few teaspoons of raspberry syrup.
Below him, in the canoe (representative of one half) are an egg (white) and a lemon (juice). Half ounce of each.
It may seem like a lot to go through to memorize this drink – but I repeatedly let it sit for weeks without thinking much about it and then see how much I’ve retained – and it goes right out the window. Even after making it a dozen times or more.
So the extra effort here is to get the “clover” to associate properly and strongly to the rest of the ingredients, starting with the primaries, Beefeater and Dry Vermouth. Recall comes all at once.
Site Author, David Jonathan Curtis: David Jonathan Curtis, a seasoned professional in his fifth decade of bartending and bar management, began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in both iconic Midtown clubs and Wall Street bars, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa, Florida. David’s roles as a Bartending Instructor at the American Bartending School in Tampa, while maintaining a second job bartending, and his years experience of managing bars, and working as a Brand Ambassador along with his extensive professional library of over 1,000 bartending books, highlight his dedication to continually refining his craft. He holds a diploma in Bar Management and is BarSmarts certified by Pernod Ricard.
