Consider it one of the great mysteries of cocktail history: the origin of the martini. How did the essential cocktail come to be? Did it evolve like some Galapagos rarity, or did it burst, like Athena, full-blown and irresistible from the head of Zeus? And even if we are to discover the when and the who of the martini’s invention, how do we explain the drink’s wildfire spread from late 19th-century semiobscurity to its early 20th-century status as one leg of the cocktail tripod: Manhattan, Bronx, martini.
The martini of the late 1800s was a many-sugared thing. Instead of a dry gin, it used a syrupy sweet gin called Old Tom; instead of dry French vermouth, it called for sweet Italian vermouth; and then, as if one’s teeth hadn’t already been turned to carious stumps, two more sweet elements were added: orange curacao and gum syrup (that is, sugar-water). The only constituent of the concoction that wasn’t sweet was the dash or two of Boker’s Bitters.
In other words, the name may have been around well before the 20th century, and the martini was even a drink of gin and vermouth — it’s just that it was the wrong sort of gin and the wrong sort of vermouth, with excess sweeteners to give it the candied consistency of condensed milk.
Jump ahead to the 1950s, when the martini ruled supreme. There would come to be any number of nicknames for the drink — the see-through, the mart, the hard white, the silver bullet, the crisp. Bartender and drinks writer Derek Brown said that the nickname “crisp” attached itself to the drink “because of its incredibly clean and fresh flavor.” But admirable as Brown’s skills as a barman and drinks historian may be, I disagree with him on this one. Not only is “crisp” not a nickname for a martini. It was not a nickname at all.
Let’s return to 1898, to a copy of an industry publication, The Hotel Monthly. To fill a couple of pages, the magazine included a dozen or so recipes for cocktails hotel barmen should know, material that would turn up a few years later as part of A Bartender’s Guide by John Applegreen. The original sort of martini was there in all its sugary excess: syrup, Old Tom, Italian vermouth. But then, nearly at the end of the list, is something extraordinary, a cocktail instantly recognizable as the drink we now know as a martini: Plymouth [dry] gin, French [dry] vermouth, and a couple of dashes of orange bitters. Except it wasn’t called a martini. It was called a crisp.
The martini didn’t gain the nickname “crisp” because it was clean and refreshing. The nickname was a vestige of the days when what would come to be called the martini was known as a crisp.
The proof can be found in a small parenthetical in The Hotel Monthly. Next to the recipe for the crisp is the revealing information: “Specialty Kinsley’s,” which means the greatest American drink was given birth at what may have been America’s most spectacular restaurant.
Herbert M. Kinsley built his food empire on catering parties and banquets and testimonial dinners in the bustling Chicago of the 19th century. After the Great Fire, Kinsley rebuilt and then some, raising a four-story palace of dining rooms, ballrooms, meeting rooms, cafes, and restaurants. As one observer of the day described Kinsley’s, “This beautiful piece of architectural construction was erected in 1885, the style being Moresque, after the famous Alhambra at Grenada. Few, if indeed any city, boasts so magnificent a building for such purposes.” And the food was good too, so much so that many thought it superior to New York’s greatest restaurant of the day, Delmonico’s.
A grand restaurant at the crossroads of the country had a specialty cocktail. Travelers would taste it at Kinsley’s, where Applegreen tended bar, and take a taste for it back with them to cities and towns across the nation. Some would ask for it by its original name, the crisp, but most would have thought of it as an improved martini.
Thus, I suggest this Kinsley-tuned rebuild of what had been a middling performer brought the martini to national eminence. If true, then statues should be erected to celebrate Applegreen for a signal contribution to the culture of America.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
