Martini cocktail
From Academic Kids
The Martini is the iconic cocktail. H. L. Mencken once called the Martini "the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet"; E. B. White called it "the elixer of quietude."
While variations are legion, a standard modern Martini is made by combining approximately two and a half ounces of gin and one half ounce of dry vermouth with ice in a cocktail shaker or mixing glass. The ingredients are chilled, either by stirring or shaking, then strained and served "straight up" (without ice) in a chilled cocktail glass, and garnished with either an olive or a twist (a strip of lemon peel, usually squeezed or twisted to express volatile citric oils onto the surface of the drink). Capers or cocktail onions are sometimes used as substitute garnishes. An onion-garnished Martini is properly known as a Gibson.
Another common but controversial variation is the Vodka martini, which is prepared in exactly the same way as a standard Martini, with vodka being substituted for gin as the base spirit. In the 1990s, the Vodka martini supplanted the traditional gin-based Martini in popularity. Today, when bar and restaurant customers order "a Martini," they frequently have in mind a drink made with vodka. Martini purists decry this development: while few object to the drink itself, they strenuously object to it being called "a Martini." The Martini, they insist, is a gin-based cocktail; this variation should be designated as such, with the name "Vodka martini" (it may also be called a "Vodkatini" or a "Kangaroo").
| Contents |
History of the drink
The origin of the Martini is uncertain. By one widely accepted account, the Martini is a descendant of the Martinez, an older, sweeter, but similar cocktail, which consists of (approximately) two ounces of sweet vermouth, one ounce gin (specifically, Old Tom gin, a sweetened variant), two dashes maraschino cherry liquid, and one dash bitters, shaken with ice, strained, and served with a twist of lemon. The Martinez purportedly originated in California in the 1870s, probably either in San Francisco or in the town of Martinez. Some versions of this account are more specific, crediting the Martinez to Jerry Thomas, a famous and influential 19th century bartender working the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco in the late 1850s or 1860s.
In the book, The World's Drinks and How to Mix Them, copyright 1907, written by William T. Boothby, the recipe for Dry Martini Cocktail (à la Charlie Shaw, Los Angeles, Cal) instructs, "into a mixing glass place some cracked ice, two dashes of Orange bitters, half a jigger of (dry) French vermouth, and half a jigger of dry English gin. Stir well until thoroughly chilled, strain into a stem cocktail-glass, squeeze a piece of lemon peel over the top and serve with an olive." Other than the bitters and the ratio of vermouth to gin, this is remarkably similar to a modern martini cocktail. The reference to California is consistent, but other early martini history cites San Francisco rather than Los Angeles
William Grimes, restaurant critic for the New York Times avers (in Straight Up or On the Rocks: the Story of the American Cocktail) that the dry Martini was invented by Signor Martini di Arma di Taggia, the bartender at the Knickerbocker Hotel, in New York, in 1912. The fact that numerous published references to the Martini predate 1912 discounts this theory.
The Martini was an established American cocktail at the beginning of the 20th century, but did not attain its pre-eminent status as the classic cocktail until later in the century. Perhaps paradoxically, Prohibition did a great deal to elevate the Martini's stature. Americans' preferred tipple at that time -- whiskey -- requires skillful blending and long aging, whereas cheap but (marginally) drinkable "bathtub gin" is relatively easy to produce, so Martinis were more readily available in the era of the speakeasy.
The Prohibition-era Martini was quite "wet" by today's standards. With the repeal of Prohibition, and the ready availability of quality gin, the drink became progressively dryer. (A "dry" Martini is one with relatively little vermouth. One might say that a "very dry" Martini is essentially a glass of cold gin, though the ice will contribute some water to the final drink.) This trend toward dryness eventually reached fetishistic extremes, and became the source of a considerable body of Martini anecdotes, wit, and lore. One might prepare a Martini by waving the cap of a vermouth bottle over the glass, or observing that "there was vermouth in the house once." Winston Churchill chose to forgo vermouth completely, and instead simply bowed in the direction of France, while General Patton suggested pointing the gin bottle in the general direction of Italy. Ernest Hemingway liked to order a "Montgomery", which was a Martini mixed at a gin:vermouth ratio of 15:1 (these supposedly being the odds Field Marshall Montgomery wanted to have before going into battle). In a classic bit of stage business in the 1955 play Auntie Mame sophisticated pre-adolescent Patrick Dennis offers a Martini, which he prepares by swilling a drop of vermouth in the glass, then tossing it out before filling the glass with gin. Similarly, in the 1958 movie Teacher's Pet, Clark Gable mixes a Martini by turning the bottle of vermouth upside-down before running the moistened cork around the rim of the glass and filling it with gin. Also, atomizers similar to those used for perfume were sometimes used to dispense a token amount of vermouth.
The Martini's popularity waned in the health-conscious, wine-and-spritzer-drinking seventies, but resurged in the late eighties and nineties. During this "Martini renaissance," Vodka supplanted gin as the most commonly requested base spirit, and nouveau variations proliferated: the Green Apple Martini, the Chocolate Martini, and so forth. Whether the more extreme variations of this era may truly be called Martinis remains a topic of vigorous debate.
Martini lore and mixology
Western culture has created a virtual mythology around the Martini. The classic Martini of yore was stirred, "so as not to bruise the gin." W. Somerset Maugham declared that "Martinis should always be stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously one on top of the other," while James Bond from the Ian Fleming novels ordered his "shaken, not stirred", a drink properly called a Bradford.
In the novel Casino Royale, Bond's recipe is specified in more detail as made with three measures of gin (Gordon's was Bond's preference), one measure of vodka (Russian or Polish is preferred), and half a measure of Kina Lillet apertif, shaken until ice-cold, and with a large, thin slice of lemon peel for garnish (properly called a "Vesper" after his love interest in the book). By the second Bond novel, Live and Let Die, Bond was drinking Vodka Martinis, a trend that continued when 007 moved to the screen in 1962).
The concept of "bruising the gin" as a result of shaking a Martini is an oft-debated topic. A shaken Martini is different from stirred for a few reasons. The shaking action breaks up the ice and adds more water, slightly weakening the drink but also altering the taste. Some would say the shaken Martini has a "more rounded" taste. Others, usually citing hard-to-track-down scientific studies, say that shaking causes more of a certain class of molecules (aldehydes) to bond with oxygen, resulting in a "sharper" taste. Shaking also adds tiny air bubbles, which can lead to a cloudy drink instead of clear. Some Martini devotees believe the vermouth is more evenly distributed by shaking, which can alter the flavor and texture of the beverage as well. In some places, a shaken Martini is referred to as a "Martini James Bond".
The Martini has become a symbol for cocktails and nightlife in general; American bars often have a picture of a conical Martini glass with an olive on their signs. In Martini, Straight Up: The Classic American Cocktail, Lowell Edmunds, a classics professor and doyen of Martini lore, analyzes the cocktail's symbolic potency in considerable depth.
Martini variations
Many variations exist on the standard Martini described above.
- A Vodka Martini (or Vodkatini or Kangaroo) is made the same way but with vodka instead of gin, and more often uses lemon rind as the garnish. This is the most common variation, and in fact is more popular than the original in most locations.
- An In and Out Martini is a very dry gin Martini prepared by pouring a small measure of vermouth into a shaker, shaking it to coat the ice, and then pouring out and disposing of any remaining vermouth. The standard amount of gin is then shaken over this vermouth-tinged ice and served normally.
- A Churchill is made with Dry Gin, stirred, with an unopened bottle of vermouth waved above the shaker.
- An Apple Martini (also Sour Apple Martini) is a Vodka Martini with an apple flavoring such as apple schnapps, sometimes with apple, lemon or lime juice, and is often garnished with a slice of Granny_Smith apple. Some people call this an "Apple Cosmopolitan".
- A Dirty Martini has some of the brine (at least a teaspoon) from the olive jar added. (FDR was partial to a Dirty Martini.)
- A Naked Martini is made without ice, but with the ingredients and glass chilled.
- A Sweet Martini is made with sweet red vermouth, and may be garnished with a maraschino cherry instead of an olive.
- A Sake Martini substitutes a dry, clear sake for the vermouth.
- A Gibson is a standard dry Martini that is garnished with cocktail onions instead of olives.
- A Tequila Martini substitutes tequila for gin.
- An Akvavit Martini substitutes Akvavit for gin.
- A Gin Salad is made like the ordinary Martini but with three olives and two cocktail onions as garnish.
There are literally thousands of additional variants.
Sometimes the term "Martini" is used to refer to other mostly-hard-liquor cocktails such as Manhattans, Cosmopolitans, and ad-hoc or local conconctions whose only commonality with the drink is the cocktail glass in which they are served. Chefs with a more whimsical bent are even producing dessert "Martinis" which are not a drink at all, but are merely served in Martini glasses.
References
Conrad, Barnaby III. The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995. (ISBN 0-8118-0717-7)
Edmunds, Lowell. Martini, Straight Up: The Classic American Cocktail. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1998.
Grimes, William. Straight Up or On the Rocks: The Story of the American Cocktail. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Miller, Anistatia R. and Jared M. Brown. Shaken Not Stirred: A Celebration of the Martini. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.
Regan, Gary. The Joy of Mixology: Including the History of Mixed Drinks; Compleat Instruction on the Methodology of the Cocktailian Bartender; A Thorough Explication of the Theory of Mixed Drinks; A Compleat Glossary Including All Categories of Spirits and Liqueurs; A Veritable Baedeker of the Bartender's Tools and Glassware; Prescriptions for Garnish Preparation; Recipes for the Preparation of, and Discussion on, the History and Makeup of All Manner of Popular Cocktails, Martinis, Highballs, Snapers, Sours, International Sours, New Orleans Sours, Sparkling Sours, Milanese Drinks, French-Italian Cocktails, Julups, and Many Other Recently Created Cocktailian Masterpieces; Various Charts and Tables; and a Bit of Attitude. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2003.
Tastings: The Beverage Tasting Institute. Eds. Laverick, Charles, and Marc Dornan. 25 May 2004. <http://tastings.com>.
External links
- Martini Recipes (http://www.whattodrink.com) Martini Recipe Database.
- Martini (http://www.martiniforums.com) discussion forum with recipes and Martini chat.
- The Martini FAQ (http://www.rdwarf.com/mink/martinifaq.html)
