You might have
noticed by now that I try to make at least three blog posts per month. It’s my
way of making sure that the blog continues to have momentum and doesn’t suffer
to much from the demands of a busy life. However, this month is a bit different.
That’s because tomorrow is my wedding day.
So instead of opening
the year with an exciting new ingredient (as I promised), I’ll break my rules
for once. I’ll do just one blog post this month. And I’ll present a cocktail
that cannot be made with the current bar. Oh, the horror.
It’s even kind of
fitting in this precise case: the cocktail I’m going to present made a short
appearance in the film Casablanca. Just as Rick eventually breaks some of his
personal rules (not drinking with customers and sticking his head out for
nobody) I have good reasons to deviate from the standard for once.
Incidentally,
tomorrow afternoon at the reception there will be three cocktails available at
the start:
·
White
Lady, a favorite of my soon-to-be wife
·
White
Russian, as a tribute to the Big Lebowski and bowling
·
French
75, because our wedding is in 40s/Casablanca style
I’m going to
introduce to last one. So let’s get out the big guns.
French 75
Named after a cannon,
and not just any cannon. The 1897 model 75 mm field gun was very successful in World
War I. Usually just named the French 75 or the Soixante-Quinze, it was the
first modern artillery piece. It had a smooth operation and a high firing rate.
The French 75 uses
champagne (or another dry sparkling wine), but packs a lot more punch because
of gin. Indeed, a well-chosen name: French, smooth, powerful. In my opinion, it’s
one of the most pleasant fast routes to intoxication.
Harry MacElhone was
the first to publish a cocktail named the 75 in the ABC of Mixing Cocktails. This would later become the French 75,
after it had evolved towards a kind of gin sour with champagne. Harry Craddock
put down the new name and new recipe in The
Savoy Cocktail Book. According to Craddock it ‘hits with remarkable
precision’.
Some recipes use
cognac instead of gin for the French 75, specifically the New Orleans version.
But we’ll stick to the original here.
Not everyone has
sparkly stuff hanging around in the bar permanently. And since there aren’t a
lot of great champagne cocktails, I won’t be adding it to the bar for a long
time. But this cocktail is certainly worth trying out, so I don’t mind breaking
the rules here and letting this recipe slip through. Even though it has two
illegal ingredients.
6 parts gin
3 part lemon juice
1 part simple syrup (or sugar)
champagne (or other dry sparkling wine)
glass: tall glass or champagne flute
Shake the gin, lemon juice and
syrup/sugar with ice and strain into the glass.
Top off with champagne and stir
gently.
Garnish with a long, thin lemon spiral
and possibly a cocktail cherry.
This cocktail doesn’t
need much champagne, so if you have a decent-sized glass you can work with 6 cl
of gin. Champagne flutes can be quite small, so in that case you’ll have to
adjust accordingly.
A narrow glass might
make it hard to use a cocktail pin, but dropping the cherry to the bottom like
a stray cannonball works fine as well (the French 75 didn’t fire balls, of
course, but there’s still some cannon association there).
