Army and Navy

Gin, fresh lemon, and orgeat — the 1930s interservice drink, orgeat (from French orge, barley) documented in the American bar since Jerry Thomas's 1862 guide.

The Army and Navy Cocktail is a Prohibition-era American gin drink that uses orgeat as its sweetener — a choice that gives it a richness and aromatic complexity distinctly different from the simple-syrup gin sours that make up the majority of the category. The drink appears in American bartending guides from the 1930s onward and takes its name from the interservice relationship between the United States Army and Navy, whose shared institutional culture produced a tradition of named cocktails in officers' clubs and mess halls. Orgeat, the almond-milk syrup whose name derives from the French orge (barley), was originally produced from barley and almonds before becoming primarily almond-based in commercial production. Its history extends to medieval European apothecary tradition, where almond milk preparations were consumed medicinally and in fine cooking. In the United States, orgeat became a standard bar ingredient through the 19th century, appearing in Jerry Thomas's 1862 Bar-Tenders Guide and remaining available in quality bars until Prohibition disrupted the industry's continuity. The tiki movement's embrace of orgeat from the 1940s onward — Trader Vic's Mai Tai recipe, created by Victor Bergeron in 1944, made orgeat internationally known — sustained commercial production and gave the ingredient its modern associations with tropical cocktails. In the Army and Navy, orgeat's almond sweetness softens gin's juniper bite while adding a nutty, slightly floral complexity that plain simple syrup cannot provide.