Death in the Afternoon

Absinthe and champagne — Hemingway contributed this in 1935: one jigger of absinthe, iced champagne until opalescent milkiness, drink three to five slowly.

Death in the Afternoon is the only cocktail in the historical canon with a specific preparation instruction written and published by the author who created it. Ernest Hemingway contributed the recipe to So Red the Nose, or Breath in the Afternoon, a 1935 celebrity cocktail anthology compiled by Sterling North and Carl Kroch, in which notable writers each contributed a favorite drink with personal commentary. Hemingway's entry specified the formula and preparation with characteristic directness: one jigger of absinthe into a champagne glass, then iced champagne added until the mixture attained the proper opalescent milkiness, with the instruction to drink three to five slowly. The drink shares its name with Hemingway's 1932 non-fiction book about Spanish bullfighting — the author's attempt to explain the aesthetics and traditions of the corrida to American readers — a subject that had fascinated him since his first visits to Spain in the 1920s and that produced some of his most celebrated journalism and fiction. The drink's characteristic louche — the opalescent cloudiness that appears when absinthe's essential oils precipitate out of solution when water or other liquid is added — provides the visual identifier that makes its preparation identifiable. Absinthe's American prohibition from 1912 to 2007 made the authentic preparation impossible for most of the 20th century.