The Origins of the Bloody Mary (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Origins of the Bloody Mary (2014)

esquire.com

27 pointsthunderbong16 comments

I call them a vodka salad, which is closer to how they are served these days. It's a buffet trip on a skewer over a half cup of dressing with a shot of vodka in it.

Truth. Unless I know the place, I never order a Bloody Mary.

The same applies to a Penicillin, but for different reasons. Most places don't take the time to make/age the ginger cordial or use a properly smokey Islay topper so they inevitability come out too sweet and lack smoke.

I'm opposite- it's actually one of my 'judge-a-place' items- I'll get one as a general proxy for the quality of the place.

It's good if done well, easy to screw up, but enough flexibility to make it unique if you want.

And it's not just testing for if someone happens to know some obscure recipe.

This is the first time I've heard of a Penicillin, and I love both ginger and Islay....color me intriuged

Give it a shot at home. A ginger cordial is stupidly easy to make and you don't need to sacrifice more than a few drops of a proper sipping Scotch for the topper. IME, any cheaper mixer-Scotch is fine for the spirit base.

FWIW, if you're ever in Boulder, Colorado both "License No1" https://www.license1boulderado.com/ and "Bitter Bar" https://www.thebitterbar.com/ make excellent versions.

Oddly enough, that sounds like something that Harry Crews said in an article probably in Esquire many years ago--he was dismissing a class of drinks as inferior to whiskey.

Funny, I use gin.

I think this is a slightly better history:

https://www.diffordsguide.com/encyclopedia/496/cocktails/blo...

"'I looked at it, sniffed it. It was pretty pungent and smelled like rotten potatoes... Get me some Worcestershire sauce, some tomato juice, and lemon; that oughta kill the smell'"

I dunno, that passage is such an embellishment it makes me think the whole thing was made up.

It's not the Canadian fave that is the Bloody Caesar (where you add clam juice, of all things)

Clamato juice (tomato juice with some spices and clam broth), not just clam juice. And generally ordered as just "Caesar".

They're great! Despite the clam part sounding gross.

For a moment I thought this was about the urban legend, which got me reminiscing about the era when Snopes was a fun treasure trove of wacky urban legends, not “fact-checking” SEO slop.

My favorite variation is the Chubby Mary

https://www.leelanauticker.com/news/the-leelanau-legends-chu...

> they learned to tell the Parisian taxi drivers "Sank Roo Doe Noo!"

What exactly is this supposed to mean? Badly mangled phonetic French?

They give the address in the paragraph above: "5 Rue Danou", so yes, badly mangled phonetic French (first word is "cinq").

Tequila or mezcal is an enhancement for any bloody, IMO

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