Easy Cocktail Recipes

Enrico Caruso was undoubtedly the greatest tenor operatic star of the entire 20th century with a unique quality in his voice. Whether or not this cocktail contributed to giving Caruso’s voice its unique depth of timbre and warmth of tone, this sure justifies its title.

All sours are tart, lemony, highly-concentrated cocktails. As with many other famous brews, the basic recipe has spawned many variations.

This is one of the few cocktails where the specific use of Cognac is often stipulated. Traditionally the cocktail is always served ungarnished. The name of the cocktail is derived from the grenadine in the drink.

Dating back to the 1890s, it was a non-alcoholic mixture of ginger ale, ice and lemon peel. By the 1910s, brandy, sometimes bourbon would be added for a ‘Horse’s Neck with a Kick’ or ‘~ Stiff’. The non-alcoholic version was still served in upstate New York in the late fifties or early sixties, but eventually it was phased out.  To give this an extra kick, you can substitute whisky for the brandy.

There are literally dozens of cocktails simply entitled Brandy Cocktails. It’s almost as if bartenders around the world have all vied with one another to create their own individual versions. The cocktail recipe given here is for an accepted standard of Brandy Classic.

Take a look at the ingredients below and you can probably guess how and why this cocktail was given its name.

There is at least one other cocktail that claims to take its name from Mary Pickford, silent-screen film goddess, wife of Douglas Fairbanks Senior, and hailed as “America’s sweetheart” in her day. Whichever of the brews she herself favoured, she was breaking the law, for this was the time of the “noble experiment” of Prohibition.

A favourite of Ernest Hemingway and other Havana movers in the early 1900s, the Mojito (pronounced moe-hee-toe) has a reputation as the Cosmo for the more adventurous.

It is thought the origin of this cocktail dates back to the 1850s,when, it is believed, it was first mixed by Jerry Thomas, a famous St.Louis bartender of the day. Later, the name simply got changed, probably at the same time as the original recipe was simplified substantially.

Another survivor from the long-ago days of prohibition and speakeasies that sprang up across the length and breadth of the U.S. It is one of the few cocktails in which honey features as part of the brew.