G.P. 2 Kingsley Amis’ Ten General Principles
G.P. 2: For drinks accompanied by fruit or vegetables, try adding juice
Welcome back to the next iteration of my focus on the general principles Kingsley Amis lists in his excellent book, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis.
The book lists ten general principles, which can be summarized:
For drinks accompanied by fruit or vegetables, try adding juice
Cold trumps concentrated
Cheap alcohol for mixing with juices
Bubbly drinks act faster
Soak fruit in liquor before adding to a drink
Commercial mixes are okay
Wine preparation is important, but price is more so
He who believes he has a hangover does not
Eating fattens you
To refresh yourself on past principles, feel free to follow the links above to previous entries.
Let's keep moving!
G.P. 2:
Any drink traditionally accompanied by a bit of fruit or vegetable is worth trying with a spot of the juice thrown in as well.
Who can disagree with this one?
Kingsley provides this spot on G.P. while remarking how nice it is to add a squeeze of lemon to a gin and tonic. It doesn't matter if you prefer lemon or lime with your g&t; the point here is that most recipes don't mention the squeezing of said citrus.
You will see "garnish with _________" nearly every time but no mention or guidance to squeeze in the juice of your garnish, but doing so makes the drink superior. This applies to all highball style drinks or anything with a soda/tonic/cola/squirt component. I cannot think of one that wouldn't benefit from the added juice of its usual garnish.
Before I get too far into this, I should mention we aren't talking massive amounts of juice here. This is not something to measure. If anything, it is a flourish for a little added flavor.
What about stirred cocktails with fruit garnishes? The Ti' Punch, with its small lime coin, always squeezed and added to the glass, makes an excellent example for stirred/Old Fashioned style drinks.
So let's look at the humble Old Fashioned. The days of muddling a stalwart cocktail like the Old Fashioned are gone, and instead, we choose to drink crystal clear OFs, and all the character comes from the whiskey used. Here in the States, we seem to like our drinks pure, but this is purely an aesthetic choice. Large peels have replaced fruit garnishes, but when is the last time you tried squeezing an orange wedge into that Old Fashioned? I like to add a little squeeze as I am making the drink with the sugar and bitters. Why have cocktails become these sterile vessels of perfection? Live a little…squeeze that fruit!
What about the Negroni? While the equal parts vs. unequal proportions war wages on in nerdy cocktail message boards, I stand on a different hill yelling, "I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE RATIO! JUST SQUEEZE THE ORANGE SLICE INTO THE DRINK!" I prefer a slice or healthy wedge of orange instead of a peel with my usual Negroni build. In order to get a slice of orange, you are left with the butt end of orange. Rather than wasting that end, just squeeze it in the glass. You won't be sorry. Also, equal parts Negronis had their time, long live unequal proportions! Heavy on the gin, I say!
That leaves us with the tried and true Martini, my favorite cocktail. Now, right off the bat, I couldn't conceive adding juice to a Martini, but then I thought one could say a little brine, olive or onion, would appease this juicy principle. One then could also say the Bronx is a Martini of sorts following this principle, though I have never cared for that cocktail. If you have a decent recipe, I'd love to see it. I don't think it's for me, though.
Kingsley lists a Martini or rather a "derivative of the Vodka Gibson" with cucumber juice in it. The original recipe is listed in parts, so I took the liberty of simplifying them. This drink's name is the same as one of his most well-received books, Lucky Jim.
The Lucky Jim
In a chilled and iced mixing glass
60 ml Vodka
5 ml Dry Vermouth
10 ml Cucumber Juice*
Stir/Strain-Chilled Coupe/Cucumber Slice**
*To juice a cucumber, Kingsley recommends squeezing a thick slice of cucumber in a traditional citrus type squeezer and letting the juice run through a coffee filter. I use one of these for all my lemon and lime juicing needs. Good luck. You may also need goggles.
**Leave the peels on "for visual reasons."
In this drink, he recommends using the cheapest vodka you can find, and we will cover his frugality at length in a fortnight with G.P. 4. Next week, though, we move to one of my favorite drinking principles of all time:
G.P. 3:
It is more important that a cold drink should be as cold as possible than that it should be as concentrated as possible.
Thanks for reading!
Tomorrow on The Nightcap Show, my guest, Thomas (@the_book_slinger), and I will be chatting about vintage cocktail and cooking books. Thomas is a book collector and vintage book purveyor, and I am thrilled to have him on the show. His shelves are well curated over on Etsy. We get started tomorrow night live on Instagram at 9 pm ET.