Posted on February 3, 2024 by libationlegacy
My friend Cam Marceau, of the Monster in a Glass podcast, has invited me to join him in revisiting his old episodes, starting with the first, on the subject of the Manhattan Cocktail and it’s history. I used to take part in this programs towards the end of it’s run, but missed out on its early days. Listening to this first show from 2012, which features Cam along with his researcher Jason Kruse, I should note that it remains factually very accurate, and I can only agree with what they turned up back then. However, in the intervening years, more digital resources have become available, and I can add to and enhance their original findings.
Poring through several digital archives of newspapers, books and other documents, the first mention of the Manhattan Cocktail comes from an article which was syndicated in several newspapers. The earliest publication date for it that I’ve turned up was August 31, 1882. in the Lyndon (Kansas) Leader, under the headline “Gotham Gossip”. There is no ambiguity here, the author states plainly that “It is but a short time ago that a mixture of whisky, vermouth and bitters came into vogue. It went under various names–Manhattan cocktail and Turf Club cocktail. Bartenders at first were sorely puzzled as to what was wanted when it was demanded. But now they are fully cognizant of its various aliases and no difficulty is encountered.”
I can confirm that there is no earlier mention of the Manhattan in any of my many sources, and also that after this first reference, it was discussed more and more with each passing year. So this gives us a fairly clear starting point. If the author is to be believed, and given they clarity of his statement I see no reason for doubt, the Manhattan was invented shortly before 1882, with enough lead time for it to have become more widely known.
But despite this claim, the drink itself did not show up in any recipe books until 1884. Monster in a Glass identifies two of these books, O. H. Byron’s “The Modern Bartender’s Guide” and George Winter’s “How to Mix Drinks”. I have since discovered a third such book from the same year, which also lists a recipe for the Manhattan. The author is unknown, but the volume is amusingly titled “Scientific Bar-Keeping”. Published by a distiller, E. N. Cook & Company, the copyright was held by Jos. W. Gibson. But the Jos. W. Gibson Company was a publishing firm, so most likely they were simply the ones responsible for production.
Before we get to the recipes, I should clarify the nineteenth century terminology they employ, which can be confusing. The wineglass was a two-ounce measure according to the apothecary system of measurements, which was in common use by doctors and other compounders in the 1880s. This is corroborated in several sources, for example Sir Robert Christison’s “A Dispensatory, or Commentary on the Pharmacopoeias of Great Britain” (1842), and in the U.S., Clara Weeks-Shaw’s “A Text-Book of Nursing” (1898). A pony is generally considered to be one ounce.
Dry Martinis called for French vermouth, which was the generic term for dry vermouth, while Italian vermouth was used in Sweet Martinis, and would have been a Torino-style red variety. If “vermouth” is used without a qualifier, it would have been the Italian variety, since dry vermouth was rare before the 1890s.
Per most contemporary recipes for it, gum syrup usually did not contain any actual gum, and was the general term for simple syrup. With these facts to go on, the following prescriptions should be more or less intelligible.
“The Modern Bartenders Guide” provides two versions:
Manhattan Cocktail No. 1
1 pony French vermouth.
1/2 pony whisky.
3 or 4 dashes Angostura bitters.
3 dashes gum syrup.
Manhattan Cocktail No. 2
2 dashes Curacoa. [sic, meaning Orange Curacao]
2 dashes Angostura bitters.
1/2 wine-glass whisky.
1/2 wine-glass Italian vermouth.
Fine ice; stir well and strain into a cocktail glass.
The second of these is very close to the one I favor today, except I use a 2:1 whiskey/vermouth ratio. Cointreau can be substituted for the Orange Curacao, if you don’t have any.
“How to Mix Drinks” includes this take:
Two or three dashes of Peruvian Bitters;
One to two dashes of gum syrup;
One-half wine glass of whiskey;
One-half wine glass of Vermouth;
Fill glass three-quarters full of fine shaved ice, mix well with a spoon, strain in fancy cocktail glass and serve.
Peruvian bitters would most likely have been quinine-based, since cinchona bark was well known to have come from Peru.
Finally, “Scientific Bar-Keeping” mixes theirs like so:
2 or 3 dashes of gum syrup; 2 or 3 dashes of bitters; 1 wine glass of Italian vermouth; one wine glass of whisky. Fill the glass with ice; shake well; strain into a cocktail glass; squeeze the juice of lemon rind and serve.
This is the only one of the three that recommends shaking the Manhattan. Those crazy scientists! It’s also the only one which recommends a twist of lemon peel.
No cherry in any of these, of course. My research on the maraschino cherry for The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails reveals that those didn’t make it to America until 1885, and were unknown here at the time that the Manhattan was invented. The cherry starts to show up at the end of the 1880s, and on March 15, 1891, The Kansas City Times ran an article headlined “A Cherry in Your Cocktail,” in which a bartender relates:
‘A Manhattan cocktail?’ queried the expert, in answer to this interpolation between his fluent sentences. ‘And not too sweet!’ Ah yes, great drink, that! One moment! There; the lemon stills it, you know! A cherry in your cocktail, of course! We all have to do that now. Just where or when it started I can’t say. But talk about style! Some one of the first class places did it; and we all had to do it.
Another Manhattan Cocktail mystery concerns where the drink was invented. As Monster in a Glass points out, it was often attributed to the Manhattan Club, a political club in New York affiliated with the Democratic Party. While we still can’t be certain, several of my sources support this claim. An article in the Sag Harbor Corrector, published April 29, 1893, and entitled “Manhattan Club Cocktails,” starts off with the statement that “The popular Manhattan Cocktail is an invention of the Manhattan Club of N.Y. City, which by the by, has invented more famous drinks than any other place in the country.”
On the other hand, in July 14th, 1920, the New York Times published and article about the recent sale of the Hotel Manhattan, located at the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 42nd Street. The new owners auctioned off practically everything in the building, in 15,000 lots, described by the Times as “the largest sale of its kind ever attempted in this city.” The article goes on to say “Though brisk bidding for the Manhattan bar and its fixtures is not anticipated, the final passing of the native bar of the Manhattan cocktail is expected to attract many an enthusiast.”
This claim that the Hotel Manhattan was the birthplace of the Manhattan Cocktail caused many an eyebrow to raise, and it was not long before it was challenged in another newspaper. Two days later, the New York Evening Telegram included their take, under the headline “Where the Manhattan Cocktail Began.” This article quotes the passage from the Times, then drolly puts forward the following, in the style of a congressional resolution:
Whereas, the Manhattan cocktail was invented at the Manhattan Club, Fifteenth street and Fifth avenue, in the middle eighties; and,
Whereas, it was consecrated soon after by a reference to it in a comedy in which Mr. Le Moyne appeared, at the old Lyceum Theatre, at Fourth avenue and Twenty-fourth street; and,
Whereas, the Manhattan Hotel was built many years later, in the nineties; and,
Whereas, the Fifth avenue, the Hoffman House and countless other bars were as much “the native lair of the Manhattan cocktail” as the Manhattan Hotel; therefore, be it
Resolved. That the corroborative detail supplied by the New York Times is an example of gross exaggeration, if not pure ignorance.
This rebuttal was correct about the age of the Manhattan Hotel, it was constructed in 1895 through 1896, and could in no way be the provenance of the Manhattan. It also generated feedback from their readership, so much so that on July 20th, the Evening Telegram ran a follow-up which included some letters to the editor, under the headline “More Light on Ancient New York History.” Quoting from this:
An expert correspondent, well known to New Yorkers when the Union Club, the Hoffman House, the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Albemarle and
