Properly Sauced (Repeal Day Edition): Babbitt Cocktail

Prohibition was officially repealed on December 5, 1933. In conjunction with Ken Burns' Prohibition we read Daniel Okrent's book Last Call. It's an amazingly well-written, fascinating history of the era which freely quotes from the culture of the time. Among Okrent's sources is Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis's satirical 1922 novel. We'd never read it, so we gave it a whirl.

What a delight! (And, alas, still depressingly relevant). George Babbitt, real estate man, is the ultimate conformist and, like all conformists then as now, is entirely capable of having several contradictory beliefs at the same time. Take Prohibition. On the one hand, he thinks it's a mighty fine thing, a truly noble undertaking. On the other hand, when he and his wife throw a dinner party — why, he's got to have something for his guests to drink, doesn't he?

Lewis masterfully describes Babbitt's preparations:

He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses, and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the bartender at Healey Hanson’s saloon ... Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half-bottle of Bourbon whisky, a quarter of a bottle of Italian vermouth, and approximately one hundred drops of orange bitters. He did not possess a cocktail-shaker. A shaker was proof of dissipation, the symbol of a Drinker, and Babbitt disliked being known as a Drinker even more than he liked a Drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a handleless pitcher; he poured with a noble dignity, holding his alembics high beneath the powerful Mazda globe, his face hot, his shirt-front a glaring white, the copper sink a scoured red-gold. He tasted the sacred essence. “Now, by golly, if that isn’t pretty near one fine old cocktail! Kind of a Bronx, and yet like a Manhattan ..."

Mining this passage for clues, we tried to approximate what sort of cocktail that would be. And here you have it--a cross between a Bronx and a Manhattan.

Babbitt Cocktail

1 1/2 oz. Death's Door gin
3/4 oz. Old Overholt rye whiskey
3/4 oz. Carpano Antica vermouth
3/4 oz. orange juice
dash Angostura bitters

Stir with ice until very cold, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange peel. (Apologies to Babbitt, but this works much better with Angostura bitters than it does with orange bitters.)