For some reason, I can kind of imagine Ms. Hepburn asking for a whiskey sour in that patrician, yet slightly raspy voice of hers. "A whiskey sour, please", the "whiskey" enunciated in a clipped manner and "sour" drawn out just a little more.
Or paraphrasing Bogart's mocking line in African Queen, "Can you make a whiskey sour? Then do so, Mr. Allnut."
The Katharine Hepburn of Cocktails
By ERIC FELTEN
H.L. Mencken, in the February 1912 issue of the Smart Set magazine, argued that whatever difficulties were associated with drinking, the fault wasn't in the liquor, but in excess: "Alcohol in small doses dilutes and ameliorates our native vileness," Mencken wrote. He lavished praise, in particular, on one of the most basic drinks in the cocktail canon, "the ingratiating whiskey sour, that gives 90 per cent of all civilized lovers the valor to make the last enslaving avowals."
Some three decades later the drink was still entwined with romance of sorts, making an appearance at the opening of Raymond Chandler's second novel, "Farewell, My Lovely." A mountain of a man drags detective Philip Marlowe up a flight of stairs to a seedy bar: "Let's you and me go on up and maybe nibble a drink," he says. The giant is searching for his long lost love, a girl named Velma who was "cute as lace pants" and who used to warble at the saloon.
"We leaned against the bar," Marlowe narrates.
"'Whiskey sour,' the big man said. 'Call yours.'
"'Whiskey sour,' I said.
"We had whiskey sours."
Moose "on account of I'm large" Malloy isn't exactly a delicate flower when it comes to drinking: "The big man licked his whiskey sour impassively down the side of the thick squat glass." And soon, frustrated that no one knows Velma's whereabouts, he starts to get angry: "His whiskey sour hadn't seemed to improve his temper."
Chandler liked this scene well enough that he used it twice. The version that opens "Farewell, My Lovely" is lifted nearly word for word from a short story Chandler had written a few years before, "Try the Girl." (If only Chandler had thought to change some ugly racial caricatures in his rewrite -- a scrubbing that was actually made for the 1944 movie version, "Murder, My Sweet.")
In any case, it's fitting that Whiskey Sours (or should that be "Whiskeys Sour"?) should make several appearances in the Chandler oeuvre, as it has been observed, by the estimable essayist Anthony Lane, that the atmosphere of the novelist's Los Angeles is a "whiskey-sour climate."
The particular descriptive nature of the words "whiskey sour" has been put to use by other critics. In particular, when New York theater scribe George Jean Nathan reviewed the Philip Barry play "Without Love," in 1942, he marveled at the odd appeal of its star, Katharine Hepburn. "Although she is hardly the possessor of any overpowering sex attraction," Nathan wrote, "she is appetizing in the same chill way that a whisky sour is."
Which in my book is pretty darn appetizing -- that is, if the Whiskey Sour is competently compounded. Unfortunately, these days that is a rare occurrence. Go to the average sort of bar and ask for the drink and you will almost certainly be given a slop composed of whiskey and that dreadful prefab crutch, "sour mix." There are some bars that make their own sour mix fresh daily, but even that leads to a substandard drink, as citrus juices oxidize remarkably fast. "Trader" Vic Bergeron, in his 1947 "Bartender's Guide," got it right when he wrote: "A Sour can be the most disappointing drink in the world if it's not made with fresh lemon juice." How then to explain all that bottled citrus-and-corn-syrup mess? My guess is that the standard recipe is about two parts laziness and three parts larceny. As such, the Whiskey Sour (as with other drinks in the same family, including the Sidecar) makes an excellent test of a bar's bona fides. If the bartender reaches for the sour mix, you know to find another place to bib.
Even if properly made from scratch, the Whiskey Sour is a troublesome commodity. The problem is getting the proportions right: "This is an easy drink to screw up and a hard one to nail because the ratio of flavors is a precarious balance," writes Dale DeGroff in his recent book, "The Essential Cocktail." He says it is the classic Sour, whether made with whiskey or any other spirit, "that separates the amateur bartender from the pro." The ingredients are simple enough -- whiskey, fresh lemon juice, and sugar. But how much of each? Mr. DeGroff suggests 1½ ounces of whiskey, one ounce of simple (sugar) syrup, and three-quarters of an ounce of lemon juice. (He also suggests adding a dash of egg white so that the drink is attractively frothy on top.)
That's a good place to start, and is consistent with recipes from the late 19th century, when the Whiskey Sour was in its first vogue. But many will find it both too sweet and too lemony for their tastes. David Embury -- who, in his 1948 guide "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks," advocated relentlessly for drinks to be strong and dry -- urged readers to make Sours with the basic proportion of one part sweet (sugar) and two parts sour (citrus) to eight parts strong (spirit). For me, that's not far wrong, though a bit too tart. I suggest starting with one part each sweet and sour and four parts strong, adjusting the proportions to your taste. Shake it with ice and strain into a short sturdy glass with ice. You can also serve it in a glass packed with crushed ice, a variation known, around 1900, as a Nose-Cooler. Or add orange bitters, shake and strain into a stemmed cocktail glass and you get a vintage cocktail called a Buster Brown.
The traditional decoration for a Sour has been a cherry and a slice of orange or lemon. (Occasionally, and excessively, sticks of pineapple have been employed.) Esquire's 1949 "Handbook for Hosts" asserted that the garnish on a Whiskey Sour was a gender-based preference: "Women like it decorated with fruit." Embury suggested doing away with the "garbage" -- midcentury bar slang for "garnish" -- altogether. Your call.
But when you nibble your Whiskey Sours, remember not to overdo it. Mencken's point is well taken that in excess anything -- whether drinks or platitudes -- becomes "a debauch, a saturnalia, a delirium!" Whereas a nice Whiskey Sour "is not a viper," but "a sweet singing canary, a faithful house dog, a purring cat upon a hearth rug."
Whiskey Sour
2 oz bourbon or rye whiskey
½ oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
½ oz simple (sugar) syrup
Shake with ice and strain into a short glass with ice.
Garnish, or don't, with cherry and a slice of orange or lemon. Adjust the proportions to your own taste, and try adding a tablespoon of egg white, before shaking, to give the drink a frothy head.
Mr. Felten is the author of "How's Your Drink?: Cocktails, Culture and the Art of Drinking Well" (Agate Surrey). Email him at eric.felten@wsj.com.
2 comments:
For clever drink lines, you can't beat this one: "Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini."
A fine sentiment!
Post a Comment