Category
Vintage Cocktail
10Cocktails
Tom and Jerry
Jerry Thomas's signature creation: a warm egg-batter punch spiked with brandy and rum, served in a hot goblet. Thomas is said to have invented it during his tenure at the Planter's House Hotel in St. Louis in the 1850s, though the drink's exact origin is disputed. It was popular enough that Thomas named his 1862 bar guide after it.
Blue Blazer
Jerry Thomas's most theatrical creation: a stream of flaming Scotch whisky tossed between two silver tankards, producing a blue arc of fire before being doused with water and sweetened with sugar. Thomas used to perform it for President Millard Fillmore. It is the original bartender performance piece.
Brandy Smash (1862)
Jerry Thomas's muddled mint and brandy cocktail, the direct ancestor of the Mint Julep and Mojito families. Thomas defined a "smash" as a small Julep — a single-serving muddled mint drink served over crushed ice. His 1862 recipe calls for brandy, sugar, and fresh mint crushed in the glass.
Stone Fence
One of the oldest drinks in the American canon: whiskey poured directly into hard cider, with optional bitters. Its documented history runs from the Green Mountain Boys drinking it before the 1775 capture of Fort Ticonderoga to Jerry Thomas's 1862 recipe. Thomas kept it radically simple — whiskey, cider, ice.
Knickerbocker (1862)
A New York rum punch from Thomas's 1862 guide: Santa Cruz rum shaken with raspberry syrup, curaçao, and lemon juice over crushed ice. Named for the Knickerbocker tradition of old New York Dutch families, it is one of the earliest recorded shaken cocktails that explicitly requires fruit syrup and citrus together.
Fancy Gin Cocktail
Thomas's upgraded version of the plain Gin Cocktail: Holland gin stirred with sugar, bitters, and a dash of curaçao, strained into a small cocktail glass and garnished with a lemon twist. The qualifier "Fancy" in 1862 indicated curaçao was added to the base recipe — one of the earliest records of a cocktail differentiated by a single luxury modifier.
Locomotive
A richly unusual hot wine cocktail from Thomas's 1862 guide: red wine mulled with honey, curaçao, and egg yolk, served hot in a goblet with a lemon slice. One of the most distinctive recipes in the book — warming, complex, and entirely unlike any modern cocktail category.
Whiskey Skin
Thomas's hot whiskey drink from 1862: a measure of Scotch or rye whiskey in a tumbler with a lemon peel, filled with boiling water. The "skin" refers to the lemon peel, not the rye. The original Hot Toddy stripped to its essentials — spirit, water, citrus — with no sugar and no spices.
Sherry Cobbler (1862)
The most popular drink in mid-19th-century America according to contemporary accounts. Jerry Thomas's 1862 Sherry Cobbler is sherry, sugar, and orange slices churned with crushed ice in a large tumbler, served with a straw. It is historically responsible for popularising both the drinking straw and the widespread use of ice in American bars.
Brandy Crusta
The Brandy Crusta is the direct ancestor of the Sidecar and — through it — the entire sour-with-sugar-rim family. Invented by New Orleans bartender Joseph Santini around 1850 and included in Thomas's 1862 guide: brandy, lemon juice, curaçao, and maraschino in a sugar-rimmed glass fitted with a complete spiral of lemon peel.