Nadia George
April 30, 2024
There are multiple recipes of a classic martini cocktail and it’s all on the bartender and what they serve to you, unless you know your stuff.
The cocktail earned its name because of a very exclusive private country club in New York, a gated estate near Tuxedo Park some 65 km away from New York. This club also birthed the tuxedo jacket, not exactly the clothing but the name from where it was made popular across the US.
As for the cocktail, documentation points to Harry Johnson’s Bartenders’ Manual published in 1900. It is said that the tuxedo cocktail is based on the Fifty-Fifty dry martini that was extremely popular in the 1800s and 1900s.
5 distinct recipes for this cocktail exist, but the original recipe has old Tom gin, dry vermouth, 2 dashes of maraschino and a dash of absinthe, then 2-3 dashes of orange bitters. The others were slight variations:
Ingredients: 30 ml Old Tom Gin , 30 ml Dry Vermouth , 1/2 bar spoon of Maraschino Luxardo , 1/4 bar spoon of Absinthe , 3 dashes of orange bitters
Add ice cubes into a mixing glass and mix all the ingredients well. Once stirred well, strain into a chilled martini glass. Add a cherry and twist a lemon peel on the cocktail and serve.