Online School of Cocktailory 🍸
For drinking #alonetogether
Section 106: The Flip
We went over flip ingredients individually, but never went into the description of what the cocktail is as a whole. And the eve of a new year feels like as good a time as any to reminisce, sitting around the fire, drinking, and telling tall tales of years gone by. As per typical, there are many versions of this origin story. The roots are usually British from around the 1600s, where chilly Brits or Scots would heat up a pot over the fire with any combo of dairy, eggs, ale, liquor, and sugar to have a warm cup for your hands, and a bit of high-calorie booze-grog in your belly to ward off the cold and rain. Luckily beer slowly fell out of this old timey recipe, although I could see a solid chocolate porter flip working out. Anyway, at some point in colonial America the heating method developed to where they would plunge a red hot iron into the cocktail mixture like some olden days barista steaming milk. This would make the mix violently froth or “flip” in the pot. And like anyone who’s ever left milk on the stove too hot, you’ve seen the flip when it goes from aaalllmoost warm to oh-shit foam in a matter of seconds. At some point the iron poker step was removed from the recipe (I’m gunna guess it was whoever had to clean the floors after drunk people kept making iron-poker bubble milk in the hearth). And some point after that (probably based on different climates as the recipes traveled) more recipes developed for cold flips than warm ones (hello Mudslides and Piña Coladas). But regardless, we cheers to the ingenuity of our forebears who survived their own trying times with a little booze.
And in the end the origin doesn’t really matter anymore. Our memories aren’t a fixed puzzle piece in our lives. Their size grows and shrinks depending on how much importance we let them carry through our futures. So many people and places, pets and houses, food and drinks, diets and sugary cocktails all come and go. But the stories and feelings they leave you with never die. May the collections of stories that make up our lives bend and grow and survive the ages like a good tall tale told by the fire after a couple o’ drinks with friends.
All my love 💓 💘 ❤ 💕 💗 and happy new year,
Jet
P.S.
In case you were waiting for one last recipe, here’s a new years cocktail send-off from “A Drinkable Feast” by Philip Greene:
Although the Hôtel Ritz Paris opened back in 1898, the legendary Bar Hemingway in the Cambon Wing is now officially 100 years old. In 1921 the head bartender there, Frank Meier, knew all the social elites and their secrets, from Winston Churchill to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and invented this recipe, The Royal Highball for the King of Spain.
-The Royal Highball-
In a mixing tin, muddle 4 strawberries in 1 ounce of Cognac.
Transfer to a highball glass and fill with ice.
Slowly add 4 ounces of Champagne and swizzle to dredge up some of the fruit.
Garnish with one whole strawberry. 🍾 🥂 🍓
FIN
Jet Tries 