With Wimbledon back this year, the fancy folks who can afford tickets have once again found themselves in a rather undignified scuffle, shouldering through the crowds for pints of Pimm’s cup — that is, a drink of Pimm’s No. 1 (a bittersweet gin-based liqueur), lemon soda, fruit, and foliage in a tall glass with plenty of ice.
Those who find it humiliating to claw their way to the bar will be relieved to learn that it is part of the Pimm’s tradition. Pimm’s cup, the de facto summer drink for the British society scene, was invented at a restaurant perhaps just a little less than aristocratic.
Pimm’s was in the heart of the city of London, a lunch spot for bankers who fought their way in for a quick bite. Pimm’s eatery “is a first-rate luncheon-place for anyone who is tough of muscle and even of temper, who do not mind, in fact, a little mud on his boots or his coat torn in striving to get a sandwich,” advised an 1889 guidebook, London of Today. “Tall gentlemen who are adepts in a supper-room scrimmage in a west-end mansion will come off best at ‘Pimms’ — at least between the hours of 12:30 and 2. It is no place for frail lads or for men less than the inferior limit of standard height for infantry.”
Pimm’s restaurant is, alas, gone. So, too, for the most part, is a proper Pimm’s made with a distinctive ingredient. “What,” one might ask, “ever happened to the borage?” The herb, either the plant’s furry herbaceous leaf or its edible blue flower, used to be an essential part of the drink. A 1950s London travel guide described Pimm’s sandwich bar as an old-fashioned pub famous for a “gin-sling with a flower of the herb borage on top and much else underneath.” The “much else” includes orange and lemon slices, cucumber, and sometimes mint. (Occasionally, strawberries intrude. They should be discouraged.)
Borage is a rare ingredient in mixed drinks, but it is not exclusive to the Pimm’s cup. Barman Jerry Thomas included, in his groundbreaking 1862 How to Mix Drinks, or the Bon-Vivant’s Companion, one recipe that called for the herb: “Claret Cup a la Brunow.”
Thomas proposed the drink “ought, from its excellence, to be called the nectar of the Czar, as it is so highly appreciated in Russia, where for many years it has enjoyed a high reputation amongst the aristocracy of the Muscovite empire,” to which one might have replied to the good professor of the mahogany, “Aw, go and pull the other one.” But there was indeed a famous diplomat who represented Russia in London and Berlin in the middle of the 19th century whose name, Baron Philipp von Brunnow, suggests that the drink was served at Russian Embassy parties. Here’s how it’s constructed: pour three bottles of claret (a light Bordeaux) into a punch bowl. Add two-thirds of a pint each of curacoa and sherry, plus a third of a pint of brandy and four ounces raspberry liqueur. Sugar to taste. Add three oranges and a lemon cut in slices, together with “some sprigs of green balm, and of borage.” Thomas says not to forget “a small piece of rind of cucumber.”
Thomas demonstrates that the cucumber-borage combination was not the sole province of the Pimm’s cup. It was, however, a flavor that would have been familiar in London, and if Mr. Pimm had simply taken the recipe of the “claret cup a la Brunow” and replaced the wine and brandy with gin, he would have had a mixture not altogether unlike Pimm’s No. 1. The Russian cup, I should mention, was finished with fizzy water, just as the Pimm’s cup is made effervescent by the addition of lemon soda.
This summer, whether you are mixing up Pimm’s cup or Brunnow’s, you can’t go wrong decorating the glass with a few blue borage flowers. Alas, if you want a crop of the herb with which to make authentic Pimm’s cups, it may be rather too late to plant seeds. But borage blossoms can be had from purveyors of edible flowers, such as Gourmet Sweet Botanicals.
Make your own and avoid the crush of Pimm’s-soaked crowds.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
