Old Fashioned

What to expect

Taste

Whiskey, first and last, which is the entire point of the drink. What the sugar and bitters do is not add flavour so much as change the shape of the whiskey's own: the sugar rounds off the alcoholic edge and lengthens the mid-palate, and the bitters put a dry, spiced frame around it. Bourbon shows as vanilla, caramel, corn sweetness and charred oak; rye is drier and peppery through the middle. The Angostura contributes clove, cinnamon, gentian and a real bitterness that arrives late and stops the drink being merely sweet whiskey. Orange oil is the top note and reads as brightness rather than as orange. There is no acidity in this drink at all, which is unusual and is why it feels rich.

Aroma

Orange oil, sprayed fresh, is the loudest thing and it should reach you before the glass does. Under it, cake spice from the bitters and then the whiskey's own vanilla and oak. Because the drink is only slightly chilled the aromatics are far more available than they are in a martini, and the smell keeps opening for the whole twenty minutes as it warms.

Texture

Weighty, coating and slightly syrupy, with no aeration at all. The sugar is doing this; take it out and the same whiskey and bitters feel thin and hot. As the ice melts the drink gets progressively lighter and easier, so the texture at minute one and minute twenty are noticeably different — which in this drink is a feature, since the last mouthful is a long drink and the first is nearly neat spirit.

Sound

Almost silent. A short chime of spoon against glass at the start, then the single cube shifting occasionally as it melts and turns — a slow, irregular clink that is the only sound the drink makes over twenty minutes, and one of the reasons it reads as a contemplative drink rather than a sociable one.

How the flavour moves

Orange in the nose. Then sweetness and a soft warmth almost immediately, then the whiskey opening across the whole tongue, then bitterness arriving at the back and pulling everything dry. The finish is long, warm and spiced, and it lasts a genuinely long time — this is a drink whose aftertaste is most of the experience. Across the glass the arc is dilution: it starts strong and sweet and tightly packed, and ends longer, cooler and more aromatic, with the whiskey's subtler flavours becoming available as the water opens it up. That is the same reason people add a drop of water to neat whisky.

Serve it

Cold at the start, cool by the middle, cellar-temperature at the end, and good throughout — which cannot be said of most cocktails. The large cube is what makes this work: a single big piece has far less surface area than the same volume in small cubes, so it chills adequately and dilutes slowly. Small ice turns the drink watery in ten minutes.

Goes with

Fat, salt, smoke and char. Steak. Roast pork. Barbecue. Aged cheddar and blue cheese. Salted pecans and walnuts. Dark chocolate. A cigar, historically, and the drink is built for that kind of slow accompaniment. Where it fails is against anything acidic, delicate or green — there is no acid in the glass to meet it, so salad, fish and most vegetables taste thin next to it.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy in every respect except judgement. There is no technique in it — stirring in a glass — but the sugar has to suit the whiskey, and two bottles at the same price can need noticeably different amounts. Hence the instruction to taste it before the drink is finished, which is the only recipe on this site that tells you to do that.

Cost

Low to moderate. It is one measure of whiskey plus pennies. The only reason to spend money is that this is the drink where the whiskey is most exposed, so the bottle shows.

Equipment

A rocks glass, a bar spoon, a jigger, and a way of making one large ice cube — a silicone mould is the usual answer and it makes a real difference. A muddler if you are using a sugar cube. Nothing else.

When to make it

Evening, autumn and winter, with time to spare. It is the wrong drink to make for six people at once and the right one to make for yourself.

Best season

None, though it is unmistakably a cold-weather drink.

You know it is done when

The glass frosts on the outside and beads with condensation. The drink itself stays completely clear — this is a stirred drink and clarity is the mark of it — and the orange oil, when sprayed, is briefly visible as a fine sheen on the surface.

And it feels like

Cold to the back of the hand and slightly viscous on the spoon. Taste it at the halfway point: it should read as whiskey with the edges taken off, not as sweetened whiskey. If you can identify the sugar as sugar, there is too much of it.

Food safety

Nothing raw. It is a large measure of spirit with very little dilution and it should be treated as one.

Where it goes wrong

Small ice, which turns the drink watery within ten minutes and is the single biggest avoidable fault. Muddling fruit into it. Not dissolving a sugar cube properly, so the sweetness is all in the last mouthful. Adding too much sugar at the start — you can always add, and you cannot take it out. Skipping the orange twist, which costs the drink a third of its aroma. And using an expensive, delicate whiskey, where the sugar and bitters flatten exactly what you paid for.

If it does go wrong

Too sweet: nothing to do but add another 10-15ml of whiskey, which makes a bigger drink. Next time start at 7ml of syrup. Too harsh or hot: under-stirred, or under-sweetened — stir another ten seconds first, since dilution and sugar do similar work here. Watery after ten minutes: the ice was too small. Gritty at the bottom: undissolved sugar cube. Tastes flat and dull: no bitters, or old bitters — Angostura keeps for years but not forever, and a bottle that has been open a decade has lost its top notes.

Making it ahead

It batches very well. Mix whiskey, syrup and bitters in proportion, add water at about 20 per cent of the total, bottle it and keep it in the freezer. Pour over a large cube and add the twist fresh. This is how a bar serves them quickly and it costs nothing in quality.

Keeping it

None for the drink. Sugar syrup keeps a month in the fridge and is worth making in quantity.

Reheating

Not applicable.

Freezing

It batches and freezes well — see Making it ahead.

Leftovers

None.

Scaling it

Built one at a time by nature, but the batching above is the answer for any number.

Substitutions

Rye instead of bourbon makes a drier, spicier drink and is arguably closer to the nineteenth-century original. Aged rum makes an excellent old fashioned and is worth trying. Demerara sugar syrup in place of white adds a molasses note that suits bourbon particularly well. Orange bitters alongside the Angostura is a common improvement. What is not a substitution is muddled fruit — see How it changed.

Dietary swaps

Vegan, dairy-free and nut-free. Grain spirit, so the usual gluten caveat applies to anyone avoiding grain distillates entirely.

Shopping for it

Bourbon or rye, mid-range, at 45 per cent or above if you can — lower-strength bottles get lost under the dilution. Angostura bitters. Unwaxed oranges, since the peel is the garnish and the oil is the point. A silicone mould for large cubes costs very little and changes the drink more than a better whiskey would.

Keeping the cost down

Make your own sugar syrup — equal weights sugar and hot water, stirred until clear, kept in the fridge — rather than buying it. On whiskey, the mid-range is the sweet spot and always has been: this drink improves a mediocre bottle more than any other and does the least for an excellent one.

Sustainability

Nothing notable.

Nutrition

Around 180 calories and roughly 2.4 UK units. Almost all of the calories are alcohol; 10ml of syrup is about 20 calories.

Worth it?

Worth it, and it is the drink to learn first. Two of its three ingredients cost almost nothing, it takes ninety seconds, and it teaches you more about the whiskey in your cupboard than drinking it neat does — because the sugar and water open up flavours that the alcohol was covering. Buy the ice mould.

Where it comes from

Origin

The United States, and the drink predates its name by decades. The definition it embodies is printed in 1806; the name comes into use in the 1870s and 1880s.

Also called

Originally just 'a cocktail', and later a Whiskey Cocktail. The Old Fashioned name is a retronym — a name invented for the original once the word had been taken over by something else.

Said out loud

As it looks.

What the name means

Literally the old-fashioned way of making a cocktail. It is one of the very few drink names that is an argument about drinks.

History

The Balance and Columbian Repository, a newspaper in Hudson, New York, printed the definition in May 1806 in reply to a reader who had asked what a cock-tail was: a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water and bitters. That is the whole recipe, and this drink is the surviving example of it. Over the following seventy years the word cocktail broadened to cover almost any mixed drink, and by the 1880s a drinker wanting the original had to specify. The Pendennis Club in Louisville, Kentucky is often credited with inventing it around then, sometimes via Colonel James E. Pepper carrying it to New York; the club may well have popularised or named it, but the drink itself is documented eight decades earlier.

Why it matters

It is the drink that defines the category, and the one most used as a shorthand for taking drinks seriously. Its twentieth-century decline and twenty-first-century revival track the whole story of cocktail culture: the muddled-fruit version is what the drink became when nobody was paying attention, and the return to the plain build is what the craft bar movement was largely about.

When it is eaten

Evening, cold weather, and slowly. It is a first-drink-of-the-night or a last-drink-of-the-night drink and a poor middle-of-the-party one, because it takes twenty minutes and does not survive being carried around.

The traditional way

Built in the glass and stirred, never shaken. The sugar dissolving into the spirit is the technique, and it is the reason a sugar cube needs muddling with water first.

How it changed

Badly, and then back. Some time in the mid-twentieth century it became normal to muddle an orange slice and a maraschino cherry in the bottom of the glass and top with soda, which produces a sweet, pulpy, diluted drink that shares only a name with the original. That version is still what many bars serve by default, and it is worth knowing that it is a departure rather than the tradition. The revival since the 2000s has largely restored the 1806 build with an orange twist standing in for the muddled fruit.

Regional variations

Wisconsin has a genuine and thriving regional version made with brandy rather than whiskey and topped with soda or lemon-lime, muddled fruit included; it is a real local tradition rather than a corruption and is ordered by name as sweet, sour or press. Otherwise the variations are spirit swaps — rum, tequila, aged genever — each of which works because the template is so simple.

How this version differs

It does not, from the historical build. Where it differs from most modern recipes is in telling you to taste the drink partway through and adjust, and in using both small ice and one large cube rather than only one or the other.

Sources and credit

The 1806 definition is from The Balance and Columbian Repository and is the standard citation in drinks history. The Pendennis Club claim is noted as a claim.

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