Chrysanthemum

This week I’m going old school again and pulling a recipe from the pages of the The Savoy Cocktail Book, the Chrysanthemum cocktail.  In addition to the recipe the ingredients for this cocktail are old school as well.  Benedictine, for example, has been around for 500 years this year.  More on that later this week.

The Savoy notes that the Chrysanthemum is “well-known and very popular in the American Bar of the S.S. Europa.”  The SS Europa also has an interesting history that’s worth noting.  The Europa was initially built as an ocean liner to make the transatlantic crossing.  Shortly after being put in to service it took the Blue Riband, becoming the fastest passenger liner making the crossing at the time, a title it would keep for over three years.  With the liner’s speed the Norddeutsche Lloyd company was able to offer a weekly transatlantic trip with only a pair of ships.  There are some other cool bits that you can read about at the Wikipedia link above.  My favorite is that the Europa had a sea plane that launched by catapult from the upper deck.  Okay, cocktail time!

Chrysanthemum (Savoy)
2 oz Dry Vermouth
1 oz Benedictine
3 Dashes Absinthe
1) Combine ingredients in a shaker over ice
2) Shake until well chilled *
3) Strain into a chilled cocktail glass
4) Garnish with an orange twist

*For reasons unknown to me, most of the Savoy recipes call for shaking.  However, since this recipe includes no cloudy ingredients I’ll be stirring it instead.


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