Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The Twentieth Century Cocktail



Here's my recipe for the Twentieth Century:
1 1/2 oz gin
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz Lillet
1/4 oz light cream de cacao

A lot of recipes for this drink call for equal parts of the Lillet/lemon juice/creme de cacao. I prefer it the way I've written it above. The chocolate should just be a whisper. A ghostly suggestion. Don't be shy, break out the jigger and measure this one.

If you don't keep Lillet on hand, and need an excuse to expand your ingredient list, this cocktail is it. Just think, you can also make 007' s Vesper Martini with it. If you need more excuses to buy Lillet, head over to CocktailDB and use the ingredient search. They list 82 cocktails that use Lillet.

To my taste, this is one of the best cocktails there is.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Dr.Cocktail said...

Hi! I could not agree more, and I'm one of those who published the original formulation. Here's what's funny: when I first had it made for me, when I first made it for myself, well, we always restrained out addition of the Lillet automatically, almost as though running the recipe through a Dolby filter. We always wrote it the original way - but never made it that way. It never even occurred to me until somebody who got my book mentioned "Wow! You can really taste the cacao" and I thought, jeez when I make it it's really subtle, almost entirely in the aftertaste. And then I realized our mental filter!

Dr.Cocktail

8:53 AM  
Blogger jimmyp said...

Thanks for the comment Doc! I must admit, your fantastic book brought the cocktail back to my attention and helped me tweak my proportions just so. I recommend the book to everyone I meet.

10:57 AM  
Blogger Dr.Cocktail said...

I remember my first Twentieth Century. It was 1991. It was at Pierre's Los Feliz Inn in Los Angeles. The bartender handed me a bar guide I'd never seen before...the 1953 UKBG Guide to Drinks. I was astonished...so many drinks I'd NEVER seen before in a guide I'd never known existed. With my utterly retro nature, the Twentieth Century simply leapt out at me. One sip and...well, you know the rest!

I'm thrilled you like the book, too. It adds to the impetus for me to do another!

Thanks!
Doc

11:14 AM  
Blogger jimmyp said...

sign me up for the first copy!

11:50 AM  

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