IBA official cocktail | |
---|---|
Type | Wine cocktail |
Base spirit | |
Served | Straight up: chilled, without ice |
Standard drinkware | Champagne flute |
IBA specified ingredients† |
|
Preparation | Pour all the ingredients, except Champagne, into a shaker. Shake well and strain into a Champagne flute. Top up with Champagne. Stir gently. |
† French 75 recipe at International Bartenders Association |
French 75 is a cocktail made from gin, champagne, lemon juice, and sugar. It is also called a 75 cocktail, or in French simply a soixante quinze ('seventy five').
The drink dates to World War I, and an early form was created in 1915 at the New York Bar in Paris—later Harry's New York Bar—by barman Harry MacElhone. The combination was said to have such a kick that it felt like being shelled with the powerful French 75mm field gun.
The drink with its current name and recipe developed over the 1920s, though similar drinks date to the 19th century. In the 19th century, the champagne cup was a popular cocktail, consisting of champagne, lemon juice, sugar, and ice. Gin was sometimes added, yielding a drink much like the French 75. [1]
The drink was first recorded as the "75" in Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails, 1922 edition, by Harry MacElhone, and in the same year in Robert Vermeire's Cocktails: How to Mix Them, which credits the drink to MacElhone. [2] However, the recipes differed from the current form – MacElhone's version consisted of Calvados, gin, grenadine, and absinthe, while Vermeire added lemon juice. [2]
The recipe took its now-classic form and "French 75" name in Here’s How, by Judge Jr. (1927), consisting of gin, sugar, lemon juice, and champagne. [3] This recipe was republished with the name "French 75" in The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), which helped popularize the drink. Some later cocktail books use cognac instead of gin, such as The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks by David A. Embury.
The French 75 was popularized in America at the Stork Club in New York. It appears in the movie Casablanca (1942) and is referenced twice in the John Wayne films A Man Betrayed (1941) and Jet Pilot (1957). In 2016, it appears in the ITV series Mr. Selfridge , which is set in London in the 1910s and 1920s.
A fanciful alternative story of the invention of the French 75 was related by humorist Jean Shepherd on November 17, 1969, wherein he credits Gervais Raoul Lufbery as the inventor. The mixture, as related by Shepherd, is champagne and cognac on ice with perhaps a twist of lemon. [4] This version is not credible, given the documented earlier version.
The recipe of the French 75 is very similar to one of the most popular cocktails, the Tom Collins, with champagne replacing carbonated water. According to the recipe in Harry MacElhone's book Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails, a French 75 is supposed to be served in a highball glass. The highball glass, which the Tom Collins cocktail is also served in, supports the theory of the French 75 being a variation of the Tom Collins. [5]
A "French 125" replaces the gin with cognac. A "French 95" replaces the gin with bourbon.[ citation needed ]
The Tom Collins is a Collins cocktail made from gin, lemon juice, sugar, and carbonated water. This "gin and sparkling lemonade" drink is typically served in a Collins glass over ice with a cherry garnish. A non-alcoholic "Collins mix" mixer is produced, enjoyed by some as a soft drink.
The sidecar is a cocktail traditionally made with brandy, orange liqueur, and lemon juice. It became popular in Paris and London in the early 1920s. Common modifications of the original recipe are a sugar rim, added sugar syrup, and an orange twist or lemon twist.
The martini is a cocktail made with gin and vermouth, and garnished with an olive and/or a lemon twist. Over the years, the martini has become one of the best-known mixed alcoholic beverages. A common variation, the vodka martini, uses vodka instead of gin for the cocktail's base spirit.
The Singapore sling is a gin-based sling cocktail from Singapore. This long drink was reputed to have been developed in 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, Singapore. It was initially called the gin sling.
White lady is a classic cocktail that is made with gin, Cointreau or triple sec, fresh lemon juice and an optional egg white. It belongs to the sidecar family, made with gin in place of brandy. The cocktail sometimes also includes additional ingredients, for example egg white, sugar, cream, or creme de menthe.
A "fizz" is a mixed drink variation on the older sours family of cocktail. Its defining features are an acidic juice and carbonated water. It typically includes gin or rum as its alcoholic ingredient.
A greyhound is a cocktail consisting of grapefruit juice and gin or vodka mixed and served over ice. If the rim of the glass has been salted, the drink is instead called a salty dog.
The Paradise is an IBA official cocktail, and is classified as a "pre-dinner" drink, an apéritif.
A Bloody Mary is a cocktail containing vodka, tomato juice, and other spices and flavorings including Worcestershire sauce, hot sauces, garlic, herbs, horseradish, celery, olives, pickled vegetables, salt, black pepper, lemon juice, lime juice and celery salt. Some versions of the drink, such as the "surf 'n turf" Bloody Mary, include shrimp and bacon as garnishes. In the United States, it is usually consumed in the morning or early afternoon, and is popular as a hangover cure.
The corpse reviver family of named cocktails are sometimes drunk as alcoholic hangover tongue-in-cheek "cures", of potency or characteristics to be able to revive even a dead person. Some corpse reviver cocktail recipes have been lost to time, but several variations commonly thought to be tied to the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel remain, especially those espoused by Harry Craddock that originally date back to at least 1930 and are still being made. Many "reviver" variations exist and the word is sometimes used as a generic moniker for any morning-after cocktail, also known as a "hair of the dog".
The old pal is a cocktail consisting of equal parts rye whiskey, French vermouth (dry), and Campari.
The boulevardier cocktail is an alcoholic drink composed of whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Campari. It originated as an obscure cocktail in late 1920s Paris, and was largely forgotten for 80 years, before being rediscovered in the late 2000s as part of the craft cocktail movement, rapidly rising in popularity in the 2010s as a variant of the negroni, and becoming an IBA official cocktail in 2020.
Harry MacElhone was an early 20th century bartender, famous for his bar in Paris, Harry's New York Bar; his influential cocktail book, Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails; and for inventing or first publishing numerous classic cocktails.
The between the sheets is a cocktail consisting of white rum, cognac, triple sec, and lemon juice. When made with gin, instead of rum and cognac, it's called a "maiden's prayer".
A John Collins is a long drink of London dry gin, lemon juice, sugar and carbonated water, which was attested in 1869, but may be older. It is believed to have originated with a headwaiter of that name who worked at Limmer's Old House in Conduit Street in Mayfair, which was a popular London hotel and coffee house around 1790–1817. It is essentially a variant of Tom Collins, evidently a latter name for the same drink.
The Blackthorn is an Irish whiskey or sloe gin based cocktail. Both versions emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The doctor cocktail is a pre-prohibition era cocktail that traces in drink guides to as far back as 1917, when it appeared in Hugo R. Ensslin's Recipes for Mixed Drinks. As originally described the cocktail called simply for Swedish Punsch mixed with lime juice.
The Airmail or Air Mail is a classic cocktail based on rum, lime or lemon juice, honey, and sparkling wine. It was probably created during or shortly after the period of prohibition in the United States of America or on Cuba, i.e. in the 1920s or 1930s.