The Modern

Scotch, gin, absinthe, and grenadine — a pre-Prohibition multi-spirit formula whose absinthe component was banned in 1912 and not fully restorable until 2007.

The Modern Cocktail is a pre-Prohibition American preparation that combines blended Scotch whisky and gin in the same glass — a spirit-pairing approach that reflects the experimental, anything-goes attitude of early 20th-century American bartending before Prohibition imposed commercial and regulatory constraints. Multi-spirit cocktail formulas were considerably more common in pre-Prohibition American bars than in subsequent decades: Colonial and 19th-century American punch traditions had always combined multiple spirits, and professional bartenders of the 1890s and 1900s applied the same multi-spirit logic to single-glass cocktails. Blended Scotch whisky, which became the dominant style of Scotch produced following the development of the patent still by Aeneas Coffey in 1831 and the subsequent blending of malt and grain whiskies by merchants including Andrew Usher from the 1860s onward, was a common American import throughout the pre-Prohibition period. The Modern's additional components of absinthe and grenadine connect it to the pre-1912 American bar's standard use of absinthe as a flavor accent — a technique that disappeared with absinthe's American prohibition in 1912 and was not restored until 2007. The combination of Scotch's smoky grain character, gin's juniper-botanical freshness, absinthe's anise aromatic, and grenadine's pomegranate sweetness produces a drink of unusual complexity.