Brooklyn Cocktail

The original 1908 Brooklyn - equal parts rye and Italian sweet vermouth with dashes of Amer Picon and maraschino, rounder and sweeter than today's dry-vermouth version.

This is the Brooklyn in its original form, as first printed in Jacob A. "Jack" Grohusko's Jack's Manual (1908). Grohusko, head bartender at Baracca's restaurant in lower Manhattan, built the drink as a borough companion to the already-popular Manhattan and Bronx, and his formula called for equal parts rye whiskey and Italian (sweet) vermouth - the "Ballor" brand he named was a sweet vermouth - lifted with a dash each of Amer Picon and maraschino, stirred over ice and strained. The result sits much closer to a Manhattan than the modern Brooklyn does: rounder, sweeter, and softer, with the bitter-orange Amer Picon and nutty-cherry maraschino reading as accents rather than driving the drink. The now-familiar dry-vermouth version came a few years later, when Jacques Straub's 1913 manual reprinted the recipe but swapped the Italian sweet vermouth for French dry vermouth - most likely a misreading of the unfamiliar "Ballor" brand name - and that drier interpretation was carried into Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book and became the standard people recognize today. Amer Picon, the bitter-orange French aperitif whose formula Gaetan Picon first created in 1837, later became difficult to source in the United States after it was reformulated and its American imports discontinued, which is why modern bartenders reach for Amaro Ciociaro or a similar bitter-orange amaro in its place.