In November 1948, the Princeton Alumni Weekly took note that at the recent trouncing of Harvard — the Tigers beat the Crimson 47 to 7 — members of the class of 1938 had upped their own game, drinkingwise. “A new wrinkle in game enjoyment was sponsored by some Eight-Ballers,” observed the Princeton Alumni Weekly. “Nothing so low as bottle and flask nipping” for the class of ’38. No, they “served old-fashioneds complete with all fixings.”
Fixings? That would imply that the old Princetonians fell squarely on one side of the Great Old-Fashioned Debate. For more than a century, the aficionados of the Old-Fashioned have been sparring over this important question: Is the drink a simple combination of whiskey, sugar, bitters, and water? Or is it something more elaborate involving oranges, lemons, cherries, and, for some, even pineapple? If the class of ’38 had drinks recognizable as old-fashioneds by the fact they were made with fixings, that would mean their drinks would have been garnished, at the very least, with orange slices and maraschino cherries.
Celebrated bartender Dale DeGroff describes those who put fruit in their Old-Fashioneds and those who abjure it as “warring camps.” The fruit-averse clan can claim that the drink they favor traces its lineage back to the original “cocktail.” The first drink ever to be called a cocktail was finally described in 1806. It was said to be a mix of the liquor of one’s choice with sugar, bitters, and water. Such a drink is old-fashioned indeed.
The 1940s and ’50s saw no little conflict over how an Old-Fashioned should be made. Broadway impresario, bibliophile, and foodie Crosby Gaige advocated the purist approach in his 1941 Cocktail Guide and Ladies’ Companion: “Serious-minded persons omit fruit salad from ‘Old Fashioneds.’” By contrast, the “frivolous window-dress the brew with slices of orange, sticks of pineapple, and a couple of turnips.”
Esquire magazine’s 1949 “Handbook for Hosts” mocked the austere simplicity demanded by the purists, in particular those who take the austerity kick so far as to deny the drink any ingredient other than ice and liquor: “Them what likes their Old-fashioneds without sugar, without bitters, without water or seltzer, without ice and certainly without fruit are just too old fashioned to name their drink as ‘straight whisky, please.’”
The disagreement persists. Bartender DeGroff helped kick off the craft cocktail revolution by demanding that drinks made with fruit be made with fresh fruit. Not surprisingly, he favors fruit in his Old-Fashioneds: “Those other guys just want some sweetened whiskey, not an Old Fashioned.”
Perhaps the most prominent of those “other guys” is drinks writer (and DeGroff pal) David Wondrich. He insists that a “properly made” Old-Fashioned is one “without the fruit.” The orange slices, cherry, and such are examples, Wondrich writes in his 2002 Esquire Drinks book, “of the indignities that so many American cocktails had visited upon them under Prohibition: anything to hide the taste of the ‘liquor.’”
So, what does it matter? More than one might think. This dispute is not only perennial, it determines one’s whole approach to making cocktails. The Old-Fashioned is seen as one of a very few core cocktails, along with such essentials, from which the superabundance of American drinks are derived. Alter it, and the whole cocktail infrastructure is thrown out of kilter. Or at least that’s the danger of which the ascetics warn in trying to scare us off of the evil intrusion of orange (not to mention the unspeakable addition of pineapple).
Here, as in so many things, what is called for is balance, an Aristotelian mean, if you will. The Old-Fashioned calls for muddling (that is: grinding and crushing) a bitters-soaked bit of sugar and splash of water. Where the fruit faithful get it wrong is in muddling the orange along with the bittered sugar and water. It makes for a pulpy mess. Instead, if you would have orange in your Old-Fashioned (and who am I to judge?) put a slice or two in a shaker along with your whiskey and some ice. Shake it vigorously so that the ice cubes beat up the orange, flavoring the whiskey with both the tart peel and the sweet pulp. Strain into the glass with the bitters, sugar, and water. Add a big ice cube or two and stir.
Whether you advertise that yours is not an austere Old-Fashioned by garnishing the glass with a fresh slice of orange and a cherry — the “fixings” — is entirely up to you.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
