Strawberry – Recipe from the ‘Old Waldorf Bar Guide’

Dash of Orange Bitters 

Juice of twelve Strawberries, or one pony of Syrup 

Three-quarters Brandy 

One dash of Maraschino 

Stir; strain; Strawberry in glass 

I remember being almost genuinely surprised when stumbling across old recipes with fresh berries like this inside, wondering half how you juice a strawberry, and as to whether these were easy to get hold of. I think this was largely in part to starting to properly bartend in an age of fruit-based martini’s, when your fruit all came from France as a puree which involved a fairly organised defrosting routine, and a ton of plastic. This is the first I’ve come across this year, and on discovering we did have strawberries at work I can remember being quite excited to try it.

This tastes like a strawberry martini, surprise surprise. There are some other rich flavours floating around thanks to the Cognac and the Maraschino, but from 12 crushed and shaken strawberries the flavour is predominately all about the berries. I would almost think this to be a pre-cursor to the Fruit martinis of the late 90’s, and I wonder if it wasn’t someone picking up an old book like this and trying the recipe which launched all the brightly coloured fruit juice martini’s most people secretly love.

I would recommend giving this a go, crush or shake the berries, and aim for in-season if possible, its nice to stumble across a missing link between prohibition and the spice girls, despite the incredibly creative name.