How we like to take our medicine

Some bitters are now sold with one specific benefit in mind

Given that alcohol is, most of the time, fundamentally bad for you, it’s interesting how often we as a species turn to it in the hope that it will improve our health. I suppose there is the idea that anything that makes you feel good must be doing you good, plus the known preservative capabilities: in fact in many cases the alcohol may simply be a vehicle for the cure. But there is an interesting cycle of medicine and recreation. Gin started life probably as a tincture of health-giving juniper berries; by the time Englishmen in far-flung malarial parts of the Empire were looking for something to wash down their medicinal quinine the gin to which they turned was fully recreational. And it was not long before the quinine tonic was being consumed for fun too.

Dr Leizaola explains the medicinal/recreational interface to DBS

Visual Anthropologist Dr Ricardo Leizaola recently put on a modest exhibition (now sadly closed) at Goldsmiths College, in New Cross, south London, on just such alcohol-based healing. Originally intended simply as a compendium of remedies, the display became more complex, illustrating “the intersections between and among nominally different ways of thinking” as Dr Leizaola discovered a vast range of tinctures from different cultures—all for sale in multicultural London.

Here among things we recognise, such as Angostura, Peychaud’s and the offerings of the Bitters Truth, we see Yoyo, Taabea, Adutwumwai and Dr Aladdin’s The 7 Keys. Dr Laizaola makes a good point by showing how one can buy Dandelion and Burdock Bitters marketed as a cocktail ingredient at the same time that you can buy it as a health-giving tonic—ironically even as a “detox” tincture (and this is something that is 45% alcohol). It’s easy to forget how herbal snifters such as Jägermeister, Becherovka and Chartreuse were originally medicinal.

"Gin bitters"—apparently rather tasty

Dr Leizaola himself remembers how, growing up in Venezuela, it was common to stuff a handful of watercress into a bottle of rum to make a tonic. “Watercress is used more as medicine than as salad green in Venezuela,” he says. “It is boiled in milk and given to those with chest-related problems and colds. It is macerated in rum for the same problems but also used for recreational purposes. It is actually
one of the most popular bitters, with a peppery flavor and clear colour. Radishes are also macerated in rum or vodka as a warmer and appetizer—it tastes quite good despite the funny smell!” I think we’re going to have to get busy in the Institute’s lab…

Other products, once sold as a cure-all, are now marketed in some parts of the world entirely as enhancers of male sexual potency—a video screen shows a TV commercial for Mamajuana Kalembu, from the Dominican Republic, in which a young buck eyes a nymph emerging from the sea towards him…then straight past him into the arms of a goofy nerd. His secret? You guessed it. Meanwhile one Caribbean product seems to rely solely on its name—“Bedroom Bully”—to make the point, while Mighty Power and Resurrection Formula don’t leave too much to the imagination either.

Even today restorative/detoxifying tinctures are sold as a conceptual
opposite of booze, yet containing as much alcohol by volume as whisky

The actual content of these tinctures varies enormously: in London markets you can buy dry herb/spice/bark mixes so you can knock up you own mamajuana and Dr Leizaola bought a few examples, clearly containing different ingredients, despite claiming to be the same thing. Perhaps it’s all a testament to our universal need to believe we can change our health and fortunes by eating strange, rare things.

In parts of Africa there is a tradition of “gin bitters”. English colonists brought with them their own traditional infusions—gin and tonic—and the name stuck. (I had guessed that the oddly-named King George Bitters—“God’s Blessing”—which claims to cure at least seven different ailments, hailed from some ex-colony, as I know that Trinidad’s Angostura* was an official supplier of bitters to George V, but Dr Leizaola tells me it actually comes from this country.)

Now Ghanian Herb Afrik Gin Bitters is sold** for recreational consumption too—and is actually Dr Leizaola’s top tip for tastiness, along with Alomo Bitters from the Kasapreko company, also in Ghana. Expect some cocktail recipes on this blog soon.

More photos from the exhibition may be found at our Flickr page.

Dr Leizaola’s tip for buying many of these products is Kumasi Market in Granville Arcade, Brixton, London.


* Actually invented by a German doctor in Venezuala, as a cure for stomach upset and fever.
** By GIHOC Distilleries—who also produce a couple of "gins" based on molasses spirit, which sound intriguing.

On the use of Champagne in cocktails

A French '75. (The sugar cube quickly loses
its cubeness and becomes more of a heap)

I've largely given up ordering Champagne cocktails in bars, having come to the conclusion that the classic versions offered in many have far too much brandy (and often too much Angostura). I'm guessing this is because these components are a lot cheaper than the Champagne itself, though it may just be a sort of gleeful "more is more" ineptitude. (At 43 South Moulton I watched as the barman—who was full of cocky confidence in his mixological wisdom—placed a sugar cube on the bar top and literally saturated it with bitters, before slopping it into a glass which he filled a good third full with brandy.)

I feel that if you’re going to make a mixed drink with Champagne you should be able to taste that Champagne and the recipes should be subtle. For the record, I would take a sugar cube, splash three or four drops of bitters on to it then place it in a champagne flute. Over this I pour enough cognac just to cover it, then top up with Champagne. (This is based on glasses a good five inches tall.)

When I became interested in the French ’75, a mixture of champagne, gin, lemon juice and sugar, I tried applying the same principle. The drink takes its name from a French 75mm cannon from the First World War—and the naming is ascribed variously to the experience of drinking it being like the impact of a 75mm shell, or to the combination of typically British and French ingredients representing some sort of entente cordiale. Its invention is often attributed to Harry McElhone (of Harry’s American Bar in Paris), although Harry himself apparently attributed the drink to MacGarry of Buck's Club in London (home of the Buck's Fizz; it's also no accident that the barman at Woodhouse's Drones Club is also named McGarry*). Many are actually under the impression that the drink originated during Prohibition in the US (where it became popular at the Stork Club), though Simon Difford feels that it is unlikely the Americans would name a drink after a (metric unit) French WWI gun, especially given that the war would have been long over by the time Prohibition came along.**

The 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book has the ingredients as described above (apparently the first recipe to appear in print), though it's worth noting that David Embury in his classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks from 1948 seems to think the standard version uses cognac and that gin is a variation. More strangely, Larrousse Cocktails (UK edition 2005) by Fernando Castellon states that the original French '75 used calvados instead of the Champagne, and that it was McElhone who made the switch. I can't help thinking that if this were true it is scarcely the same drink, though if there was originally a drink called a French '75 containing gin, calvados, lemon juice and sugar, then you can't argue with that. (I must try it.) Castellon does not give his sources, however. In Robert Vermeire's Cocktails: How to Mix Them (1922, though I admit my copy is the twelfth edition) his recipe for a Champagne cocktail*** has you "squeeze the essence of two or three pieces of lemon peel into the glass" and add another piece to the drink, suggesting a pretty close relationship between the two cocktails. It's easier to see the French '75 as evolving from the Champagne cocktail than from the drink Castellon describes.

Most people seem to use 1½ or 2 measures of gin, about ½–1 measure of lemon juice and about a teaspoon of sugar syrup or fine sugar. These are stirred or shaken and added to a glass to which the Champagne is then added. Some recipes add triple sec, calvados or grenadine. Some serve the drink on the rocks and some with a maraschino cherry.

This version came as the result of my tinkering along the lines of the classic Champagne cocktail described above.

1 sugar lump
3–4 drops of orange bitters
Juice of ¼ of a lemon
About a measure of gin
Champagne

Splash the bitters on to the sugar cube and place this at the bottom of a flute. Add enough gin just to cover the cube. Add the lemon juice then top up with champagne, stirring gently if necessary, but not with the intention of dissolving the sugar cube—it should sit there at the bottom, bubbling away and gradually breaking down. Although the classic version is supposed to derive its firepower from the quantity of gin, making it this way means you can still taste the Champagne’s character as well as the gin coming through, plus hints of rind oil from the bitters, all freshened by the lemon. Of course it becomes sweeter as the sugar dissolves and as you get closer to its source at the bottom, but, hey, life is about change.

*Oddly, no one seems to agree on MacGarry's Christian name—I've heard Pat, or Malachy—or even whether it was McGarry, MacGarry or Macgarry
**Of course the basic principle of adultering Champagne was much older—the Champagne cocktail is mentioned by Jerry Thomas in 1862. The Seelbach, a combination of bourbon, triple sec, Angostura bitters and Peychaud's bitters with Champagne, was invented in 1917 at the Seelbach hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, though apparently lost until rediscovered by the hotel in 1995. I've not tried it but it sounds interesting.
***In fairness Vermeire does also have you "soak" the sugar cube in bitters, but I still think this is OTT.