3 Cocktails We Stopped Making a Century Ago

Today we're making three vintage cocktails with raspberry syrup. I think raspberry syrup might be the most slept on fruit syrup ingredient out there, and while you can find raspberries pretty much any time of year, and they might be considered great for summer cocktails, I don't know why, but I just have this association with raspberry cocktails in the winter. So we'll make three of these historic drinks today, including the Prince Henry Punch, the Santa Maria Bracer, and the Savoy Plaza. And if you get through this video and you want even more raspberry cocktails, check out the Clover Club, the White Line, which I think is great, and it's almost identical to the Knickerbocker, both of which are from Jerry Thomas, or try the Bird of Paradise from the Tropical Center book, another excellent cocktail. Now when it comes to raspberry syrup for your cocktails, you have a couple of options here. You can either make your own, or you can buy it, and I'll show you how you can make it, and then I'll share with you my favorite option that you can buy. To make your own raspberry syrup, take some fresh raspberries and weigh them. Then take that number and multiply by 0.8. I'm kind of guessing right now, and we'll see how close I am. I'll explain that later. Then use that number as the amount of sugar to add. You can vacuum seal this, or just use a Ziploc bag. Actually, Ziploc is just fine here. I'll leave this in the fridge overnight, but the raspberries do not take long to break down and macerate. This is just after one to two minutes. Next, I'll strain this through a fine mesh strainer, and now I'll check the bricks, and it's showing up at 52, so I was just a little bit off, but it's basically a one-to-one raspberry syrup. Now, the reason that I use 0.8 as a number to multiply by is because raspberry juice is about 10 bricks. That's 10% sugar by weight, so I didn't want to do an equal parts of sugar to juice ratio because of the sugar already in the raspberries, so if you take any amount of raspberries or anything else that's 10 bricks and multiply by 0.8, that'll tell you the amount of sugar you need to get to 50 bricks. This number only works when it's 10 bricks, and I'm guessing my raspberries were probably higher, like 12 bricks, but to be more official, I have a bricks calculator on my website, makeanddrink.com, that you can use, and the only thing you need to know is the weight of the fruit or liquid and the bricks, which you can test yourself on a refractometer or just look up some averages online like I did for raspberries. Now, if you prefer buying a syrup, then check out Liber & Co., which is today's sponsor of this video. They make excellent syrups, including the raspberry, and if you're watching this around Black Friday from November 18th through December 1st, Liber & Co. is offering 20% off all syrups, 25% off if you order six or more, and 30% off if you order 12 or more, so check the link in the description. But before you do that, let me taste both of these side by side. It is bright. It is intensely raspberry in the best of way. I think better than raspberries. I find raspberries to be hit and miss sometimes, and I generally don't really like eating raspberries by themselves, but the raspberry syrups, they make such intensely fresh syrup. Very similar if you've ever made your own grenadine out of fresh pomegranate seeds or arils. It's just totally different than using a store-bought juice. But many of you don't want to go to the trouble to make a syrup, so I'm going to taste this Liber one right now, which I've already had and kind of been using. I mean, spoiler alert, I find it delicious. That's why I'm happy to work with them. They are unique and different from each other. The Liber and Co one, it has a richness that you can't get from the fresh fruit. It's like a jammy quality to it, like a real intensity of flavor. And then there's multiple levels of flavor. There's a little bit of florality to it, so it's a little bit more intense. I know a lot of people like to make grenadine and then add some pomegranate molasses. It's kind of like, it has that richness to it, but very jammy. So it's a lot more deeper in raspberry flavor and not as fresh. They both will work in cocktails. And I think if you're working through cocktails, maybe thinking about the rest of the ingredients in that cocktail just to determine which, if you have both, which would work better in that application. All right, the first cocktail today is the Prince Henry's Punch. And I don't have solid details on the origin, but the first recipe I could find was from 1905 in the Hoffman House Bartender's Guide from Charlie Mahoney. And I believe it was named after Prince Henry of Prussia, who was visiting and touring the United States in 1902. Prince Henry was a younger brother to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Probably not a family that we need to celebrate, but here we are. I've adjusted this recipe slightly, but for the most part, I'm keeping it the same as the original. So three quarter ounces of lime juice, half an ounce of raspberry syrup. I'm using the fresh one here. One and a half ounces of green chartreuse. And one and a half ounces of rum. And the recipe calls for Medford rum, which would have been a strong molasses rum, I believe from Boston. I'm using Jamaican rum instead. And of course it's Spith and Crutz. I'll garnish with some raspberries here. And I just realized I forgot to top this with soda or leave room. So I'm doing that now. And I drank some of this and it is intense. It definitely needs a soda one. Let's try it. Cheers. Either one of those raspberry syrups is going to work in these recipes today. But I do think when I was looking at the recipes and which one to use fresh and which one to use the one from Liber, this one has that really herbal kind of intensity of chartreuse. So having the fresh raspberry kind of just brightens it up a little bit in addition to the lime juice. It is definitely a chartreuse cocktail, but it's not too intensive a chartreuse cocktail. The most maybe interesting thing so far is that Spith and Crutz gets kind of lost there. Don't use a real expensive Jamaican rum or whatever rum you're going to use, because I do think that chartreuse in equal amounts is going to dominate it. But overall, it's not a dominant chartreuse cocktail. So I came across this recipe. I thought it was super interesting. And looking at the timeline for Prince Henry and when he came to the United States, it matched up a couple years after his visit. Makes sense to me in a book. But then as I was searching more and more to try to find other and earlier references to this drink, which I could not find, I found a bunch of modern takes on it. But the couple sources I saw didn't reference back to 1905. So there's no doubt though. I mean, the modern versions I saw was like rum, chartreuse, and raspberry. So it's got to be based on this. But this is another one of those cool, for me, rare finds where it's kind of deep in this book somewhere that you've not seen before. Me, I've not seen before. And finding a cocktail that seems like, okay, on paper, this looks like it will work today. Like we don't have to really change much and obviously changing a little bit here and there, but for the most part, it does work. And yeah, you need a bottle of green something or other, but if you have green chartreuse, I don't know if you want to use a full ounce and a half of your green chartreuse, but if you're looking to use that bottle, try new things, and you like raspberries and you like rum, then this is the cocktail to try. Next up, we have a very interesting, unusual, and original drink from the 1934 book, Drinks As They Were Made Before Prohibition. And this is where we're going to find the Santa Maria Bracer. I don't know too much about this book, but from skimming through it, it seems to be a sincere attempt to help a bartender learn the trade since there were obviously not as many bartenders during Prohibition. So this book comes out in 1934, and much of it is advice on how to differentiate oneself from a soda fountain clerk, which would have been popular in the years up to the repeal of Prohibition. Now, like the last cocktail and the next cocktail, I'm slightly revising these recipes to use ounces instead of ponies, jiggers, and bar spoons. This drink also calls for an egg, and that would be accurate, but I'm changing it up for my preference and just using egg white to be more in line with a sour cocktail as well as making something that I want to drink. But if you prefer a cocktail using a whole egg and a complete meal, then use a whole egg. I'm going to start with half an ounce of lemon juice, half an ounce of raspberry syrup. I'm using the Libor & Co version here. Half an ounce of creme de menthe, one and a half ounces of a brandy or cognac, and then one egg white. I'm going to garnish this with some fresh nutmeg and then a little lemon twist. So there you go, the Santa Maria Bracer. Cheers. Well, that is exceptionally minty. The mint from the creme de menthe comes through. First and foremost, it kind of knocks over everything else. You can still get the sweetness and the tartness there from the raspberries and the lemon juice. Raspberries and lemon juice work very well together in cocktails. I used the Libor & Co for this one, so it's a little bit richer as opposed to being brighter, so a deeper, darker, richer raspberry flavor. And as far as brandy goes, you definitely don't need to use expensive brandy here because that creme de menthe is so prominent. A high quality creme de menthe, if you can get your hands on one, would be a good thing to have in your bar if you're going to make creme de menthe cocktails, because you'll probably have that bottle for many years to come. So why not get something that's high quality? The Tempest Fugit is great for making grasshoppers or whatever else needs creme de menthe. Then I would go with that bottle. I will say I find it to be a very good, interesting holiday cocktail with the raspberry and the mint. However, I did not use a whole egg. Had I used a whole egg, I think that would transform this to someplace I don't want to be. But the cocktail I'm serving right now is sour format with brandy using lemon juice. And you could up that lemon juice too if you want to provide more of like a sour cocktail and that tartness. And then the egg white helps lengthen it out. It's very good. It's a drink I've never heard of, and I've only seen it in that one book. Now this goes for all the other cocktails we're talking about today and other times too. But just because I found a reference to something, let's say it's the 1930s, 1934, doesn't mean that there's nothing before that. I can't check every historic cocktail book. There are thousands of them. So the ones that I have, I look through, and this is the only time I've seen this recipe for the Santa Maria Bracer. All right, we got one more raspberry drink for you today, and it's an Apple Jack drink from Laird's. They released this pamphlet in February of 1934, and it features recipes from bartenders and bars across the United States. I'll be using the Laird Apple Brandy Bottled in Bond, which I find to be much better than the standard Apple Jack, but use whichever one you have or you can get your hands on. We're making the Savoy Plaza from the Savoy Plaza Hotel, and the drink was created by John Tietelbaum. So start with half an ounce of lime juice, half an ounce of raspberry, except I'm using the richer Liburn coat here, and one and three quarter ounces of Laird's Apple Jack. Calls for a lime peel in the glass, but I'll express that over the top first, and there you go, the Savoy Plaza. All right, before we get going, this is the bottle that I was talking about, the Laird's Straight Apple Brandy Bottled in Bond. If you don't have a bottle of Apple Jack, I would suggest getting this, the Bottled in Bond Straight Apple Brandy instead of the Apple Jack. Apple Jack is fine and good, but this is just a little bump up from that. It's not too much more expensive. Another one of those bottles that you might have on the shelf for a long time, and it's great in a lot of holiday cocktails if you're looking for those. So let's try the Savoy Plaza. Cheers. That raspberry throws you for a loop a little because the first sip there, it tasted like a more classic bourbon cocktail as opposed to Apple Brandy, just because the raspberry with that apple flavor there and the lime. There's a little bit of bitterness here, which I think is just from the expression of that lime peel over the top. The drink recipe calls to just put the lime peel in the glass. If I were to make this again, I'd probably bump up the sweetness just a touch, just maybe an extra quarter of an ounce here to help balance it out because there's a bit of a, I don't want to say harshness, but we're using the higher proof Apple Brandy. So that comes through more. But if you, if you're looking to explore Apple Brandy cocktails, this is an excellent place to start. It's very simple, very basic, just a simple template of spirit with a sweet syrup and then lime juice. So you got folks three raspberry syrup cocktails using a fresh raspberry syrup or a commercial raspberry syrup that you can get. I obviously prefer Libra and Co. Even though they're sponsoring this video, had you asked me over the past three years of making videos like, Hey, I like your drinks, but I don't want to make my own syrups. I've always pointed to people in the comments or on discord to Libra and Co. So I'm very excited to be working with them because they've sent me a bunch of syrups and I just can't wait to try all of them. And I love trying them here in these cocktails. All of these cocktails today are over 90 years old. And with a couple of tweaks and adjustments, they still work for today. Raspberry syrup is just so delicious. It just, I think it works so well with citrus, whether it's lemon or lime and a spirit. To me, it has that same quality of like grenadine and cranberry cocktails, even though they're much different. So if you're looking for something different in the holiday season, try these. And if you enjoyed this video, don't just give it a like below, give a comment below and let me know if you want more raspberry historic cocktails, because I found a bunch more that were super interesting and I just couldn't get to them today. So if you want to see more of that, let me know in the comments below. Otherwise give this video a like, comment about any of these drinks that you may have had before. If you want to support this channel more, I have a Patreon page and otherwise, see you in the next one.