Cocktails

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This article is about the mixed drink containing alcohol. For other uses, see Cocktail (disambiguation).

A typical cocktail, served in a cocktail glass.

Contents [hide]

1 History

2 Derivative usages

3 See also

4 References

5 External links

A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink that contains two or more ingredients—at least one of the ingredients must be a spirit.

Cocktails were originally a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters.[1] It now means almost any mixed drink that contains alcohol.[2] A cocktail today usually contains one or more kinds of spirit and one or more mixers, such as soda or fruit juice. Additional ingredients may be sugar, honey, milk, cream, and various herbs.[3]

[edit]History

The origin of the word cocktail is disputed.

The first recorded use of the word cocktail is found in The Morning Post and Gazetteer in London, England on March 20, 1798:[4]

Mr. Pitt,

two petit vers of “L’huile de Venus”

Ditto, one of “perfeit amour”

Ditto, “cock-tail” (vulgarly called ginger)

The first recorded use of the word cocktail in the United States is said to be in The Farmer's Cabinet on April 28, 1803:[5]

Drank a glass of cocktail—excellent for the head...Call'd at the Doct's. found Burnham—he looked very wise—drank another glass of cocktail.

A definition of cocktail appeared in the May 13, 1806, edition of The Balance and Columbian Repository, a publication in Hudson, New York, in which an answer was provided to the question, "What is a cocktail?". It replied:

Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else.[6]

Flaming cocktails.

Compare the ingredients listed (spirits, sugar, water, and bitters) with the ingredients of an Old Fashioned,[7] which originated as a term used by late 19th century bar patrons

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