Happy Tuesday, everyone! I was out last night, hanging out in the bar of my favorite local restaurant (Ludivine, if you happen to be in the Oklahoma City area! Go there–it is fantastic…), and we started speculating on what the first cocktail might have been. So we had to get someone’s phone out and Google it. Here is what we found:

There were things like punches and syllabubs that had recipes from the Renaissance era, but the earliest known printed use of the word “cocktail” was on April 28, 1803 in The Farmer’s Cabinet: “Drank a glass of cocktail—excellent for the head…Call’d at the Doct’s. found Burnham—he looked very wise—drank another glass of cocktail.”

The earliest definition of a cocktail can be found in The Balance and Columbian Repository out of Hudson, NY: “Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else.”

The first bartender’s guide could be 1862’s How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon Vivant’s Companion by “Professor” Jerry Thomas.

One of my favorite drinks, especially now that the weather is turning cooler, is a chocolatini–this looks like a good recipe here…

What are your favorite cocktails???