welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to cocktails after
dark today we're going to do a cocktail
out of this 1934 cocktail manual called
my new cocktail book by mr gf steel
mr steele compiled this book he went out
into the wider world collected stories
and cocktail recipes and put them in
this book as the ones that he really
liked and you can tell that he's
compiled it
because as you flip through the book you
see all kinds of different measurement
systems used for each cocktail so he has
just
taken what he's learned from somebody
else and put it in this book and hasn't
changed it at all
some of the cocktails come with stories
and the cocktail we're going to do today
comes with a story it is called the
white lady
now this is 1934.
um the white lady appears in a lot of
cocktail in a lot of cocktail books that
i have from
mid-1920s
and later and so the recipe in this book
follows fairly closely to the one in the
1930 savoy cocktail book by harry
craddick
same proportions but one of the
ingredients is different so let's start
out and and see what happens so
component
in pretty much every white lady is an
orange liqueur
this one specifically calls out
cointreau as does the one in the savoy
cocktail book
and a lot of the other recipes call for
triple sec or different orange liqueurs
any orange liqueur would work one of the
things that i have read though and
as i was researching the triple sec and
orange liqueurs
most of them have gotten a little bit
drier so cointreau is a little bit drier
than it would have been in this time
period so we may have to add some sugar
later and it's interesting in the 1934
book
he says if you can get a hold of any so
i guess in 1934
it was hard to get a hold of cointreau
who knows next in in the 1934 recipe is
lime juice
now
pretty much every other white lady
cocktail that i have come across
calls for lemon juice not lime juice so
i don't know
how this one ended up with lime
although the story might give this some
of that away in the 1934 cocktail book
he specifically says that this recipe
comes from mr w.c powers and mr powers
says the only new cocktail in london is
one invented by a man at quaglinos which
is called the white lady and then he
goes on to tell you how the barman at
quaglinos makes this and he calls it
specifically lime juice
so we don't know whether
it was invented at that bar with lime
juice or if the guy at that bar just
used lime juice because that's what he
had available
next in his gin every cocktail of this
type uses gin and julie and i were just
in quebec
and took a walk through the saq and
found a couple of really cool looking
artisanal gins so i'm going to give
those a go i haven't tried these yet
before at all
this one is madison park and it is a
london dry style gin
and the other gin
is this one and it is an artisanal gin
but it uses some different flavors so
let's give that a go
and we'll
ice
and shake
okay so
double strain as usual
glenn hey
that looks very refreshing which we're a
day like today it is fabulous i think so
i think so so this is called um the
white lady as presented in 1934 and 1930
and so like a ghost
yeah i don't know
i always think of that as being a title
of books with ghosts with ghosts and
yeah hauntings now
um
three ingredients
and
this book lists or attributes it to a
certain bar none of the other ones i
have attributed to a certain bar other
than the fact that it's in a book
from a bar yes
one of the interesting things is is that
these are early recipes for this
cocktail if you were to go into a bar
today and ask for a white lady
you would probably get something with
egg in it or an egg white oh okay you
would get something with cream in it
okay you could get egg and cream
to to make it more white that they they
take that white
part very literal rather than just
something that's pale
pale yellow and i see we're trying some
of our new gins some of the new gins so
let's give this a go um wait which one
have i got this is the
london dry gin in this one and that is
the 48. okay
okay
oh i like that it's definitely
refreshing yeah
um
i don't think it needs any more sugar
to me that's you thought it might need
sugar
it's got a very lemonady flavor to it it
does it does
oh
completely different
and yet both are very lovely like this
one i think has a
more gin like flavor
completely different aren't they
and yet both that would be like oh yeah
it's gin in there and this one is
which one is you almost tell me that
this was some kind of a flowery liqueur
almost so this is this is london dry gin
okay this is this one the madison park
okay
and this is
so i looked at i looked at i looked at
probably a dozen different bottles in
french this morning that we picked up in
quebec
and i was reading the ingredients of all
of them and some of them aren't but yes
that one is blueberry and i think that
makes such a difference in that drink
it's very lovely
okay
i can see
i can see how that one has that flavor
i need a different drink in the middle
okay
i get it i get it
people don't like gin and i hear it over
and over and over and over again
i know who you are
cause you tell me every video i know who
you are
[Laughter]
um
that they don't like gin and i and i i
think yeah you know what there's a lot
of gin that i don't like
but maybe there's one out there because
gin is such a wide category of flavors
and those are two that have completely
different very different now i
i'm i like gin i'm not a big you know
i'm not gonna i'm not gonna drink gin
straight up per se yeah but they are
these are both really good in this yes
and i'm i'm wondering
i don't know how many various versions
of this you could make with so many
different gyms
you could just spend all day and just
drink these with a different gin so many
different gins that's a definitely stay
at home
and so many different um
triple secs or orange liqueurs that you
could use in it let's not have i'm not
going to write out the math equation and
then
then you get into lemon versus lime
juice
and it starts to get crazy like a
weekend project and
i also want to encourage you
to step away from the giant
multinational corporate branding
look at what someone in your
neighborhood
yes there's somebody in your
neighborhood doing something interesting
yes and give them a shot give them a try
it may not work out because sometimes we
buy stuff from a local producer that
just they're not there yet they're
trying they're struggling they're
learning their craft they're figuring it
out it's not there yet go ahead and
taste it but go in and taste it and try
it and and then try it in a cocktail and
you might find that these artisanal
brands are something that you find much
more flavorful
than that giant multinational corporate
brand that is trying to please
billionaires i mean they have a role
right they have a place they have a
place
they have a place
step outside of that for a moment and
try something else i think that's
anyway
this is a great cocktail yeah
the portion's really good in the sun and
enjoy it thanks for stopping by see you
again soon
you