Distillation of Sweet Delight

From the hippest of the hip to the squarest of the square, all classes of tipplers seem to derive equal pleasure from liqueurs. A chick who doesn't have the faintest idea what ingredients go into Pernod or prunelle will nevertheless receive the same luxurious wave length from these drinks.

This more-or-less universal reaction doesn't mean every flagon of liqueur contains some kind of built-in sorcery that always transforms mixed drinks or base foods into epicurean masterpieces. The current fad, for instance, of sloshing liqueurs of any conceivable flavor indiscriminately over lady fingers, parfaits, fritters and fruit is a glaring example of gastronomic ghastliness. Liqueurs are infusions or distillations made from fantastically complex formulae containing -- besides brandy or spirits and sugar -- fruits, flowers, herbs, seeds, spices, roots, bark and kernels gathered from every corner of the world. Although there are as many different kinds of liqueurs as there are people who sip them, each liqueur is an individual chef-d'oeuvre, and should be treated lovingly or, at the very least, thoughtfully.

Just to illustrate the use and misuse of a fine liqueur, after a dinner of veal marsala, gorgonzola cheese and black coffee, you'd make your guests very grateful by serving some cold clear white anisette. But if you passed the very same liqueur among a group who were still pleasantly feeling the effects of a roast turkey, sausage stuffing and Christmas plum pudding with hard sauce, your offering would go over like the proverbial cement zeppelin. Free-lance hosts who dust off the old bottle of crème de cacao just because it happens to have lingered on the shelf for too many years should be told that a bottle of liqueur isn't something you palm off like a box of leftover bonbons. It needs an occasion. Often it creates the occasion.

There are still too many mule-headed drinking men who think that liqueurs, because they're sweet, should only be served when a light of love is present. In 1601, John Rudolph Glauber in his Description of New Philosophical Furnaces pointed out that his "Cordial Extract," among other things, "refresheth the spirits, and corroborates the brains and other parts of the body." Any man, Playboy suggests, whose brain may be in need of corroboration at this time of the year should drink a moderate quantity of green Chartreuse (110 proof) to see just how virile a liqueur can be.

Glauber was an alchemist in good standing, and, at the end of his rather long recipe for the Cordial Extract he added that his potion "is made more efficacious by adding the sweet oil of gold." That this last element would prolong both youth and life he had no doubt. Glauber's gold can still be found in the harmless and tasteless little flakes of gold leaf floating in any bottle of Danziger Goldwasser or in the French Liqueur d'Or you buy in any up-to-date liquor store. (The gold, by the way, is 22 carat. Anything less than 22 carat would turn black when exposed to alcohol and sugar.) Goldwasser gets its name from gold but not its flavor: this comes from an intriguing blend of citrus peel and herbs, and it's a superb instance of how durable the great proprietary liqueurs have been over the centuries. The benedictine you drink today follows a secret formula created four and a half centuries ago by the monk Dom Bernardo Vincelli. About a century after benedictine was first made, the Carthusian Fathers of France were entrusted by a French nobleman with a secret recipe for the liqueur which became known as Chartreuse. Twice during their long history the sworn-to-silence monks who made Chartreuse were exiled from France, and although their distillery and trade name were seized by the French government, none of their would-be successors were ever able to create a reasonable imitation of the liqueur. The hooded Fathers returned from their last exile in Spain in 1931, and about 10 years later the French-made Chartreuse again appeared. During their exile they made a similar liqueur in Tarragona, Spain, but while it is an excellent product which is still shipped to South America, it lacks the plants, herbs and roots that are indigenous to France and are required for the authentic liqueur. It's generally estimated that about 130 different ingredients are needed for distilling Chartreuse. Calisay, a Spanish liqueur, contains a mere 127 ingredients. But whether a formula is made of 10 or a hundred items, the final potion that you eventually sip always points to the old principle that every noted liqueur man works by, namely, that the end product of his labors, created through the art of blending, must always be greater than, the mere sum of all the parts.

Serious liqueur drinkers know that the old proprietary liqueurs with their complex flavor blends are much less likely to become tiresome than the simple fruit flavors like peach or blackberry. But even these relatively simple liqueurs often have a mystic kind of fragrance or unidentifiable tartness that is found under one label and not another. One need only compare the illustrious Cherry Heering from Denmark with the white maraschino liqueur made in France of marasca cherries to see the vast gulf between liqueurs derived from the same kind of fruit.

Men shopping for liqueurs in the United States are often bewildered by the nomenclature on the bottles. In the first place, let it be understood that the words "liqueur" and "cordial" mean exactly the same thing. For many generations, both English and American puritans avoided the word liqueur, thinking it would identify them too closely with the hard-liquor set. If a drink was called "A Clove Cordial," or "A Conserve of Cowslips Good Against Melancholie," it was considered perfectly respectable. Liqueur is a French word, and Frenchmen, as one might suspect, subscribed only half-heartedly to this kind of mumbo jumbo, although it's true that some French liqueurs are still called digestifs. Besides the words liqueur and cordial, "fruit flavored brandy" appears on many American products these days. This latter term also means the same sweet type of after-dinner drink, with this main difference: fruit flavored brandy must be made with a brandy base, while another liqueur or cordial can be made with a base of any other distilled spirits. Most fine imported liqueurs have always been made with a brandy base. Fruit flavored brandies should not be confused with true brandies which contain no added sugar whatever and which are made from fermented mash -- such as cognac from grapes, kirsch from wild cherries or mirabelle from small yellow plums.

In the Thirties, right after Prohibition, many of the domestic liqueurs offered were only a shade better than Uncle Judd's peach pits aging in a jug on the back porch. The comparison of domestic and European liqueurs was too painful to describe. But a change gradually set in, and by World War II, when European supplies were cut off, American liqueurs had been tremendously improved. Today American distilleries produce some of the smoothest liqueurs in the world. Famous proprietary brands include Southern Comfort, Crème Yvette (an American, not a French, liqueur made with flavorings of violet and vanilla), and Forbidden Fruit, one of the American liqueurs produced before Prohibition, renowned throughout the world. Prominent liqueur firms from France and Holland are now producing liqueurs in the United States using the same old-world formulae and technicians and, in some cases, are even importing flavoring ingredients from their countries of origin. All of these factors undoubtedly account for the fact that 90% of the liqueurs sold in the United States are now domestic products.

[recipe_title]Liqueurs in Food[/recipe_title]

In pouring liqueurs over food for desserts, a good rule is to make sure the liqueurs are diluted as little as possible. If, for instance, you're pouring a fruit liqueur over vanilla ice cream, serve the dessert immediately, or the melting cream and liqueur will blend into an insipid dulcification. If you're drizzling crème de menthe over stewed or canned pears, the pear syrup should be drawn off the fruit, or else, again, the liqueur and syrup will flow into a nondescript liquid. When crepes suzette, which are relatively dry, are flambéed with liqueur, the crepes will welcome and absorb the liqueur but not obliterate it. Liqueurs come in ambrosial, fantastic flavors, and it's necessary to avoid impetuous combinations that never quite come off. Some dishes, such as a creamy rice pudding, have a kind of warm simplicity, and a liqueur poured over such fare is actually offensive. A hot, light soufflé, however, is not only good when flavored with a liqueur before it's baked, but is also fine when it's blazed with a liqueur at the serving table. Then, there are many instances where the use of a liqueur with a food is purely a matter of individual taste, and one can issue no dicta. The average man eating apple pie is usually concerned with the texture of the pastry and the flavor of the apple filling. Yet, if you take a piece of apple pie which has been out of the oven no more than an hour and a half, place the pie on a warm dish, add a good-size jigger of warm Southern Comfort, set it aflame, and spoon it over the pie, the chances are pretty good that you'll boost (continued on page 84) sweet delight (continued from page 48) the good apple flavor to new heights of gustatory joy.

[recipe_title]After Coffee[/recipe_title]

In spite of the available millions of hurry-up desserts, from biscuit tortoni to frozen cherry strudel, nobody has yet invented for men anything simpler, easier or better than the old fashioned tray of assorted cheeses followed by coffee and assorted liqueurs. Don't create an imbalance with too many plant liqueurs like Vielle Curé, Chartreuse and Strega, or too many fruit liqueurs like cherry, blackberry and crème de fraises (strawberry). It's necessary to know your liqueurs so that you can avoid obvious repetitions like curaçao, triple sec. Grand Marnier and Cordial Medoc which are all made with an orange infusion. Always provide a bottle of fine brandy not only for those who like brandy straight but for those who prefer such mixed libations as brandy and benedictine or brandy and curaçao. Pint-size bottles are more easily handled than fifths. Use a white linen napkin on the tray to prevent slipping. For men who don't have the shelf room to store a wide assortment of liqueurs, the compartment liqueur bottle containing from two to four assorted liqueurs is an attractive addition to a bachelor's bar.

[recipe_title]Pousse-Café[/recipe_title]

This showy little drink is one of the oldest forms of nonsense known to bartenders. Needless to say, the number of drinkers who never stop loving nonsense is too great to ignore. A pousse-café is a series of liqueurs, each poured layer by layer into a small glass with straight sides known as the pousse-café glass. The liqueurs remain in separate layers because they're of different weights, or densities, the heaviest liquid staying on the bottom, the next heaviest following, and so on. The main problem which bedevils the pousse-café specialist is this: densities of liqueurs of the same flavor vary from one distiller's product to the next. Since the density of a liqueur is not indicated on the bottle's label, a certain amount of trial and error is sometimes necessary in building a pousse-café. As a guide in solving this problem, one might remember that generally the higher the alcoholic content, the lower the density. This doesn't apply in all cases, but it's something of a help. If you're in doubt about a recipe, make an experimental pousse-café before the mob arrives, and when you find a formula that works, stick to it as long as you're using the same brands of liqueurs. To keep the liqueurs from mingling, pour them slowly into a teaspoon held against the inside of the glass. If you follow this procedure carefully, often a liqueur which is not poured in the proper order will seep down to its correct level, and stay there intact. Carry the drinks to the table with a steady hand. For a party, you can make a large number of pousse-cafés beforehand, and if you place them carefully in the refrigerator, each small rainbow will remain undisturbed for later serving. One pousse-café of four colors which you might try as a beginning is made by pouring into the bottom of the glass a small quantity of grenadine followed in succession by créme de cacao, triple sec and Forbidden Fruit. A small dab of whipped cream may be floated on top just before serving, if desired. For a five-tone assortment, try the following in the order listed: crème de cacao, maraschino, rosémint, yellow Chartreuse and brandy.

[recipe_title]Crème De Menthe Frappé[/recipe_title]

For those who prefer their liqueur libations cold, the simplest and best procedure is to place the liqueur bottles and liqueur glasses in the refrigerator several hours before serving. When straight liqueurs are poured over ice cubes or cracked ice, it's easy to wind up with an anemic drink that's neither water nor liqueur. Certainly it would be immoral to let a fine plant liqueur like benedictine or Strega languish among the rocks. An outstanding exception, however, is the crème de menthe frappé. The flavor of crème de menthe (one of the few liqueurs not created by monks) has such a cool stamina that it actually seems to ripen when poured over finely cracked ice. To make a crème de menthe frappé, fill a saucer champagne glass or cocktail glass with very finely cracked ice or snow ice. Pour a jigger of crème de menthe over the ice. (White or green crème de menthe may be used; the only difference is that the green is artificially colored.) A few sprigs of fresh mint, if available, may be planted in the ice to titillate the nostrils. Place a small cut straw in the ice. Some frappé specialists like to add a tablespoon of fine brandy just before serving.

[recipe_title]Side Car[/recipe_title]

It was the practice formerly, when making side cars, to combine brandy, curaçao and lemon juice in equal parts. Today's penchant for dryness in potables is better served by reducing the proportion of Curaçao and increasing the brandy. In a cocktail shaker with plenty of cracked ice pour 1 oz. brandy, 1/2 oz. lemon juice and 1/2 oz. curaçao. Shake well, and strain into pre-chilled cocktail glass. Triple sec may be used in place of curaçao.

[recipe_title]Stinger[/recipe_title]

The stinger may be served with equal correctness before or after eating. It seems just as efficacious before or after sleeping, having been used frequently as both a nightcap and an eye-opener. In many bars it's served with a glass of ice water on the side to aid in the rehydration process. To concoct a stinger pour 1-1/2 ozs. brandy and 1/2 oz. white crème de menthe in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well, and strain into pre-chilled cocktail glass.

[recipe_title]Alexander[/recipe_title]

An out-and-out sweet compound, the alexander belongs to the afternoon tea hour rather than the five o'clock apéritif session. It may be made with either gin or brandy. In a cocktail shaker with ice pour 3/4 oz. gin, 3/4 oz. white or brown crème de cacao and 1/2 oz. heavy sweet cream. Shake well. Strain into pre-chilled cocktail glass.

[recipe_title]Old Braemar[/recipe_title]

In mixed drinks often a tiny quantity of liqueur will come through as a delectable nuance. Half teaspoons of liqueurs are used to flavor this bit of felicity from Scotland. In a bar mixing glass with ice pour 1-1/2 ozs. Scotch, 1/2 oz. sweet Italian vermouth. 1/2 teaspoon Drambuie and 1/2 teaspoon curaçao. Stir well. Strain over the rocks in an old fashioned glass. Twist a piece of lemon peel over the drink, and drop it into the glass. Stir.

[recipe_title]Rock and Rye Toddy[/recipe_title]

Among the many bar staples which are actually liqueurs but are not necessarily used as after-dinner drinks are Pimm's Cup, sloe gin and, perhaps most noted of all in this country, rock and rye, a combination of straight rye, rock candy, lemon and sometimes spices. Try this: in an old fashioned glass or toddy cup pour 1-3/4 ozs. rock and rye. Add two dashes angostura bitters, a thick slice of lemon and a thick piece of cinnamon stick. Fill the glass or cup with boiling water. Stir well. Add a dash of nutmeg, freshly grated if possible. Let the drink "ripen" for about five minutes before serving. It's a drink to bring out the winter sun in man or maid and make all good companions quite cordial indeed.