Welcome to Tasting history with Max Miller where today we will be Drinking History with Max Miller.
I am Max Miller and believe it or not I have not had anything to drink yet today.
Luckily, gin is my favorite spirit so I will be showing you how to make a fascinating
gin cocktail from 1884.
So thank you to Audible for sponsoring this video as we follow gin's
journey from Dutch battlefields to the London gin craze and beyond.
This time on Tasting History.
Today's recipe comes from George Winter's 1884 How to Mix Drinks Bar Keepers Handbook.
"Gin Cocktail. Two to three dashes of gum syrup, one to two dashes of orinoco bitters, two dashes of absinthe,
one wine glass holland gin. Fill with fine ice. Stir well. Squeeze from a lemon peel on top and serve."
Seems quite simple, though a lot of those ingredients are not necessarily something that
you're going to find at most modern day liquor stores but you can get everything online.
First we got gum syrup. Now we have simple syrup today which is just basically sugar and water
that's been boiled, but gum syrup adds gum arabic and supposedly gives a softer silkier texture
to the cocktail we'll see.
Next up orinoco bitters. Now these are named after a Venezuelan river
so naturally they were made in New England,
and in the Barkeeper's Handbook there is an ad that claims
they're superior to any angostura in the world.
Angostura bitters being what we typically use today.
I have both so i'm going to do a little bit of a taste test here. First, angostura bitters which
my palette should already know.
Very bitter. A little bit of a cinnamon-y quality to them.
Quite interesting wouldn't want too many. And now for the orinoco bitters.
I feel like uh Mary Poppins dulling out her spoonful of sugar.
♪ Just a spoonful of bitters ♪
Very different. Gosh it has more like a a spicy cardamom flavor. They remind me, yeah
very much of like Indian food. I kind of like them better maybe they should make a comeback.
Then we have absinthe La Fée Verte - the green fairy. A largely misunderstood and oft-romanticized liquor
that supposedly tastes like fennel but I think we should give it a shot.
Now this has been outlawed in the United States for 80 years and I think it was probably 13 years
14 years ago they allowed it to make a comeback. So i'm going to just take a tiny tiny little bit here.
Oh yeah that that tastes like black licorice. A little bit goes a long way. What's interesting is
as you can see, maybe, it's clear but when you add it to another liquor it becomes foggy and that's
really when the green fairy kind of shows u.
And lastly genever, or jenever, or genièvre or genieve.
They all work. And a lot of people today would say that this is not a gin but we'll show you why
historically it absolutely is and technically it absolutely is. So if you're going to have that
argument which i'm sure many people will please have it in the comments section.
Now I love gin,
and right away I can tell this is not going to taste like gin but let's let's give it a shot.
*Grows hair on chest
It's actually really, really smooth. You can taste the juniper which is essential for gin
and we'll get into that but there's also like a carmeliness to it almost-
I don't know. Almost like a hint of whiskey was added, or some something like that.
It's quite nice, quite smooth but if somebody orders a gin and tonic don't put this in there.
Now there are tons of types of gin in the world. You got tom gin, you got botanical gin, your classic London dry,
and there's even one called milk gin. My favorite being Birth Is Revenge. If you can get it, get it.
Sadly I don't have time to go into all of the gins of the world but if you want a gin deep dive might
I suggest The Book of Gin on Audible.
Audible is truly one of my favorite things in this world.
I have belonged to Audible for now over 10 years and I listen to audiobooks almost daily. They're great
because I do a lot of reading research-wise for the show so when I'm able to do the research or
even just listen for fun you know when I'm out on a walk or in the car it's just such a relief
on my eyes and on my brain frankly. And recently they've added their Plus catalog so in addition
to your monthly audiobook credit you also get access to thousands of additional audiobooks as
well as podcasts, Audible originals, and these sleep tracks which I really, really need to try because [Jose snores]
I am starting to notice I'm getting bags as people have pointed out. But lately I have been listening
to Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind.
It is absolutely fascinating and the narrator Derek Perkins
has the most soothing British accent. Frankly you will feel smarter after listening to it.
So visit audible.com/tastinghistory or text tasting history to 500-500 to start
your free 30-day trial. There's also a link in the description audible.com/tastinghistory
and speaking of Tasting History before I taste this historical cocktail let us talk about the
history of gin while i finish up what i've already poured.
Nothing should go to waste.
So what is gin? It's just an alcoholic liquor made by distilling grain mash with juniper berries.
Everything else is gravy (don't put gravy in your gin though ).
Now nobody knows exactly when that distilled grain alcohol came about but in the west at least it was
most likely made using an alembic still and nobody knows who invented the alembic still but the two
leading candidates are both women with interesting names from between the first and third century AD.
Cleopatra the alchemist or another alchemist named Mary the Jewess. Probably did not come up with that name herself.
Either way next time you take a shot you can thank a woman from the ancient near east.
So they used alembic stills to perform alchemy to make alcoholic spirits all coming from Arabic words.
And really it was the Arabic world where that flourished until European alchemists in the
middle ages started using them to make aquavita or the water of life which is basically just
pure alcohol.
Now for the juniper berries mentions of their medicinal qualities especially when added
to alcohol are mentioned in Dioscorides from the 1st century AD as well as the 11th century Compendium Solernita.
Where Benedictine monks would use it for chest ailments and later on it was used to
cure the black death though it didn't work and for other cures that didn't work for the plague see my video up here.
But the first Dutch mention, and it's important that its Dutch, we'll get there,
was in 1269 when Jacob von Maerlant wrote "He who wants to be rid of stomach pain used juniper cooked in rainwater.
He who has cramps cooked juniper in wine. It's good against the pain."
Side note that is from the document called Der naturen bloeme. One manuscript of which has my favorite image of an elephant.
So you got your aquavita ,you got your juniper berries, put them together and what have you got
bippity boppity gin, except it wasn't called gin yet. In an early writing from 1552 it's called
genièvre later spelled jenever, or genever. Now for much of the 16th and 17th century the Protestant Dutch were
fighting for their independence from Catholic Spain.
It was a complicated time called the 80 Years War
which encompassed the 12 Years Truce, and the 30 Years War.
Terrible marketing, lots of brand confusion.
So the story goes that at some point in that time when the English were fighting alongside
their Protestant brethren against Catholic Spain and religion is very important in this, they
noticed that the Dutch would take a swig of genever right before they went into battle. Hence the term
Dutch courage... probably. Sometimes it comes from a different war and sometimes it...
you know it might not have happened at all but it's a good story and i'm sticking to it.
Either way the English brought it back home where one of its main uses is documented by Samuel Pepys.
"I took strong water made of juniper. Whether that or anything else of my draft this morning did it I cannot tell,
but I had a couple of stools forced after it."
I don't see that appearing in a Tanqueray ad any time soon,
but the Dutch would soon show England that there was more to gin than just
its diuretic capabilities because a few decades later when the Catholic James II was excised
from the throne of England he was replaced by the
Dutch Protestant William of Orange of William and
mary fame, and being Dutch he drank genver so it became quite a popular cordial amongst the upper crust.
Also he imposed harsh taxes on imports from Catholic countries which included France,
so goodbye wine and brandy. Hello gin. And the drink got another boost when in 1690 parliament
passed an act for encouraging the distilling of brandy and spirits from corn and some people made
brandy but most people made gin because it was a lot cheaper. So cheap that a pint of gin actually
became cheaper than a pint of ale or beer.
There are stories of people drinking a pint of gin a day.
Do you know what happens if you drink a pint of gin a day? Well Bernard Mandeville in 1714 gives us an idea.
"Nothing is more destructive, either in regard to the health or the vigilance and industry of the poor,
than the infamous liquor, the name of which, derived from Juniper in Dutch,
is now, by frequent use, and the laconic spirit of the nation... shrunk into the monosyllable, intoxicating
gin that charms the inactive, the desperate and crazy of either sex, and makes the starving
sot behold his rags and nakedness with stupid indolence, or banter both in senseless laughter,
and more insipid jests! It is a fiery lake that sets the brain in flame, burns up the entrails,
and scorches every part within."
Clearly a whiskey drinker but with that last part he was actually
kind of right because with everybody and their mother making gin the quality really took a dive.
People were adding sulfuric acid and turpentine in quantities larger than than one probably should.
And it actually kicked off something called the London gin craze where fully one-fourth of the
population of London was involved somehow in either the production or distribution of gin.
During frost fairs, which were affairs that took place on the river Thames when it would freeze over,
it was a lot colder back then, hot gin and gingerbread were sold to all as clearly most
of London did not agree with that stick in the mud Bernard Mandeville at first.
But very soon gin took a bit of a hit in the reputation department.
First of all it had gone from being drank by the king,
to being drank by the poor because it was so cheap.
And then it really took a hit in 1734
when Judith Defour was hanged at Tyburn. Her crime?
Drunk on gin and unable to afford any more
she and a friend picked up her two-year-old daughter from the workhouse where she had been
and had been given new clothes, and in the words of Judith from her own trial,
"We took the child into the fields and stripped it,
and tied a linen handkerchief hard about its neck to keep it from crying,
and then laid it in a ditch. And after that we went together and sold the coat and stay for a shiling,
and the petticoat and stockings for a groat. We parted the money and joined for a quartern of gin."
That incident understandably really shook London to its core and forced Parliament to
pass the Gin Act of 1736 which did put some taxes and regulation on who could actually make it.
You had to have a license but it didn't really work because the gin craze just kept on crazing,
but public opinion really turned a corner in 1751 when William Hogarth printed two engravings called
Beer Street and Gin Lane. In Beer Street women are seen selling fish and reading,
while smiling men paint works of art and build new buildings
beside which a wealthy woman is carried through the street in a sedan chair.
Meanwhile in Gin Lane a mother with syphilitic sores mindlessly drops her child
down a stairwell as she reaches for a pinch of snuff. While a man nearby shares a bone with a dog.
Buildings are crumbling and a barber has hanged himself as no one can afford his services,
for they've spent all of their coin on gin. Perhaps most disturbing though is the man
dancing in the street carrying a child impaled on a pole now...
Surely there was some exaggeration in Hogarth's work,
but it did what it was meant to do and Parliament passed another gin act
which actually worked this time, and gin lost favor and the gin craze ended,
but it actually made for an interesting chapter in gin's history
which was the underground selling of Old Tom Gin.
Essentially a bartender would put like a plaque of an old black tomcat on the outside of the bar like out on
the street, and then there would be a little tube going from the cat's paw or sometimes its mouth
into the bar. Somebody would walk up put a coin into the cat and then it would come into the bar,
and the bartender would pour a shot of this Old Tom Gin which was a sweeter gin than the
modern London dry gin. It's actually really quite nice uh it would go down and then the person would
be waiting there with their glass or just their mouth to catch it. Kind of interesting, and it was
actually that style of gin that was really popular during the 19th century before London-style dry
gin really took over.
It was also the mid-19th century that gin started to make a bit of a comeback
with gin palaces frequented by the upper middle class, Dickens described them as perfectly
dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left.
It also became a popular drink with the military,
because in certain parts of the world where they were having problems with
malaria they were given quinine, and/or quinine and they would it was really bitter so they would
add a little bit of tonic water and a little bit of gin in there to kill the flavor hence the GNT,
or the gin and tonic, and you put a little bit of lime in there and it helps with scurvy too.
That's actually where the gimlet started was they found if they put the lime into the gin before
they even left for port it would preserve for a lot longer.
Now in the U.S. gin had been popular
for quite some time but it really took off when it was banned, because in the 1920s during Prohibition
bathtub gin became popular for the same reason it had been popular 200 years earlier in England.
It was cheap and easy to make. Again, it tasted horrible but that is where we get a lot of the
wonderful cocktails that we know today made as a way to cover up the taste of the bad gin
but when it comes to taste lots of flavored gins have popped up over the years including sloe gin
made with sloe berries, and one of my favorites Pimms, which has added citrus and spices,
but if you have a truly quality gin it's really all you need because in the words of Winston Churchill
"I would like to observe the vermouth from across the room while I drink my martin."
Yeah I know I can't do Churchill, but unlike Churchill's martini our cocktail today is definitely mixed,
and I am ready to do it. So once you have all of your ingredients just mix them together in a glass.
Note that the 19th century measurement a wine glass of holland gin
is only about one and a half ounces or a jigger.
It varies depending on when and where it is but it is not one of these, [don't limit yourself - Jose]
so don't fill this up with gin. That is for a different kind of cocktail.
Then add some ice,
squeeze a little lemon rind over it, and bottoms up the gin cocktail of 1884.
Cheers!
Very aromatic.
Oh I like that.
Definitely go light on the absinthe, like really light, because that is going to cut through more
than anything else that really strong licorice fennel flavor, but it's really, really nice and
smooth and when I say smooth, I mean physically smooth and I think it's because of that gum syrup,
the gum arabic. It's almost...
slick but not in a weird way it's really quite nice.
I usually go for a sweeter drink. This is not that sweet. You could probably make it sweeter
adding even more gum syrup but I already put in quite a bit but it's it's really good
I would drink this, though if I went into a bar today and ordered this
I would um get kicked out unless I was at one of those hipster bars maybe in Los Feliz.
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And I will see you next time on Drinking H-
Tasting History.