Fac Potiones Excellens

lemon (Citrus limon)
Femminello or Eureka
(whole - for zest-cutting)
gentian bitters
: Angostura™ Aromatic
old-fashioned lump white sugar
(must be dense – do not use modern sugar cubes)
#1: La Perruche™^*
water (spring, or purified)
service ice
(1 fl-oz. displacement each – 1¼ inches per side)
#1: Run Helix™ 1 fl-oz.^*
liquor
(spirits are default)

Instructions

Cut a ~1” wide and ~3” long strip of lemon zest with minimal pith and reserve it.
Set the old-fashioned tumbler in the work area. Into it goes:

• gentian bitters — 2 dashes
[1 scruplespoonfull / ¼ tsp. / ~1.25 ml.]
• sugar — 1 lump
(the size is not very important – see step #7)
• water — ¼ ponyfull
[¼ fl-oz. / ~7.5 ml.]

Use the disc of the barspoon, or a bar masher, to crush the above into cocktail water without fully dissolving the sugar.
Remove the tool and take the old-fashioned tumbler to the ice. Into it is added:

• service ice — 1 cube

Return the old-fashioned tumbler to the work area. Into it is added:

• spirit — 1 jiggerfull
[2 poniesfull / 2 fl-oz. / ~60 ml.]
• optional service ice — 2^nd cube (if desired)

Garnish the drink with:

• lemon zest (reserved in step #2) — 1 strip
(twisted zest-side-down over the drink, rubbed on the rim, and put into the drink).

Insert the demitasse spoon. Do not stir. Let the drinker stir if more sweetness is desired.
Serve the drink on the napkin, with the spoon standing out at three o'cloock (from the drinker's point of view).

Tipple Description

A bar-temder interviewed in 1883in that newspaper article asserts that Cocktails made the old-fashioned way are less watery because they are served with only one piece of ice. Thermodynamically, this produces a drink that is not completely chilled when it is served, only to become very watery on top if not consumed quickly.

Compare and contrast with the Old-fashioned Cocktail Basic Form and the (Modern) Cocktail Basic Form.

Terminus post quem: circa A.D. 1830 ↔ Terminus ante quem: A.D. 1883

The old-fashioned form of the Cocktail was probably common around the time when lemons became relatively available-enough for the lemon peel to be used as the default garniture in them after about 1830. This lasted until the modern method of stirring a Cocktail through ice until cold and then straining into a goblet to prevent further dilution. It is very important to understand that before the modern 'stir' method arose, The Old-fashioned Whiskey Cocktail would have just been called a Whiskey Cocktail, as the method wasn't considered old-fashioned then. Before a Chicago newspaper description of the old-fashioned form of the Cocktail from the year 1883, there seems to have been little demand for such from the first decades of modern method. Within a short few years of that newspaper article, most American bar-tending books give both modern, and old-fashioned, versions of Cocktails, side by side. In his 1895 book, Modern American Drinks, George Kappeler gives the following pairs: Brandy Cocktail & Old-fashioned Brandy Cocktail; Holland Gin Cocktail & Old-fashioned Holland Gin Cocktail; Tom Gin Cocktail & Old-fashioned Tom Gin Cocktail; Whiskey Cocktail & Old-fashioned Whiskey Cocktail.

Thankfully, the idea that "the Old-Fashion" [sic] is a particular and singular drink invented by someone one day is quietly dying. Now if only certain men could be made to understand that the old-fashioned method is an over-watering fate to their drink, regardless of ball size and crystal clarity, we would see real thermodynamic progress, back to that of 1855, in the true Cocktail.

Old-fashioned Lump Sugar

The image above is of old-fashioned lump white sugar. Never use modern sugar cubes for archaic, or old-fashioned, Cocktails – nor Slings of any type.
Modern sugar cubes are standardized to the amount of one teaspoonful of granulated sugar. They are porous and will end up fully dissolved into any drink in which they are placed. This means that opting for a lesser amount of sugar requires cutting cubes into pieces. By retruning to the use of old-fashioned sugar for old-fashioned drinks, one will find in the package large, medium and small lumps. Also, lump sugar is dense enough, and the crystals of sugar it is made of are large enough, that any of it not dissolved during the crushing with water into Sling water, Toddy water, or Cocktail water, will remain as a crystaline layer on the bottom of the tumbler. This is why Old-fashioned Slings, Old-fashioned Toddies, and Old-fashioned Cocktails, were served with a spoon in the tumbler. In the case that the drinker wished the drink to be sweeter, he, or she, only had to use the little demitasse spoon supplied to stir more of the sugar up into the drink. This is why I often tell students that when using old-fashioned lump sugar in a Cocktail made the old-fashioned way, even using a large lump in a drink destined for a drinker with dry preference is no problem. Dissolve only a very small amount of the sugar into the Cocktail water. The rest will remain at the bottom unless the drinker wishes to stir. Unless one is using old-fashioned sugar and demitasse spoons, there isn't really any thing old-fashioned about the Old-fashioned Whiskey Cocktail.

* When using Amazon links from this site, a very small fraction might be paid to Elemental Mixology without affecting the purchase price.