Old Fashioned
Whiskey, sugar, pure restraint.
The cocktail in its oldest form: a sugar cube dissolved with bitters and water, then whiskey and ice. The sweetness rounds off the spirit without masking it, Angostura brings spiced depth and orange a bright finishing note.
- IBA · The Unforgettables
- After dinner
- Muddled
- Glass
- Rocks glass
- Method
- Muddled
- Strength
- Strong
- Time
- 3 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Ice
- Cubes
Ingredients
Measures for 1 serving
-
Sugar cube
1
-
Angostura bitters
2 dashes
-
Water
2 dashes
-
Bourbon whiskey
45 ml
Garnish
- Orange slice
- Orange twist (optional)
- Maraschino cherry
Proportions
How to make
- Place the sugar cube in an old fashioned glass.
- Soak the cube with a few dashes of Angostura.
- Add a few dashes of water.
- Muddle the cube until it dissolves.
- Fill the glass with ice.
- Pour the whiskey.
- Stir gently.
- Garnish with an orange slice or zest and a cherry.
The story
Origins
LegendA story passed down, not confirmed by the sources.
The formula is older than the name: in 1806 a newspaper in Hudson, New York, defined the cocktail as a mix of spirit, sugar, water and bitters. When late nineteenth-century bars began adding liqueurs and syrups to cocktails, drinkers asked for their whiskey cocktail the 'old-fashioned' way: the phrase 'old-fashioned cocktails' appears in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1880, and a recipe under that name is printed in Theodore Proulx's 1888 manual. A story spread by Albert Stevens Crockett in the 1930s credits the Pendennis Club in Louisville and Colonel James E. Pepper, but historians treat it as legend, since the club was founded only in 1881.
Taste profile
- Strong
- 4 out of 5
- Bitter
- 2 out of 5
- Sweet
- 2 out of 5
- Citrus
- 1 out of 5
