Breaking the rules: French 75

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).