The Spirits #148: The Pauline
A consolation of sorts
~ THE PAULINE ~
25ml light rum
25ml dark rum
15ml lemon juice
10ml sugar syrup (2:1)
Dash absinthe
Add a few drops of absinthe to a cocktail glass and roll it around so it’s coated. Now put it in the freezer. Measure the other ingredients into your shaker, add copious ice and shake - but not before you’ve put on the lid otherwise you’ll create a horrible mess. Now fine-strain through a mesh into the absinthe-rinsed cocktail glass. Grate nutmeg on top for your garnish.
Some Pauline notes:
1) The Pauline is adapted from the Savoy Cocktail Book where the recipe calls for “three glasses of rum, three glasses of sweetened lemon juice” plus the absinthe and nutmeg. I’ve rationalised it to a more user-friendly formula.
2) It’s one of those cocktails that long languished in obscurity but has been making a revival of late as bartenders return to those old books in a spirit of what’d I miss?
3) You will notice that the original recipe leaves that “rum” tantaslisingly open. Are we talking a light Cuban-style rum, which would make this more of a Daiquiri type thing? Or a dark Jamaican rum, which would (along with the nutmeg) nod more in the direction of your old-school punches? I think it’s quite nice to split the difference - I used a blend of rich, warming Appleton 12-year-old from Jamaica and the unbelievably good Saint Benevolence Claírín from Haiti which is made in pot stills and lends a grassy, keroseney, hot-diggity type note. It was so, so good. God, I love rum. Experiment and report back!
4) If you’ve pumpkin spice syrup leftover from last week, use that in place of the sugar syrup.
🖊️I am Richard Godwin.
🛒 Running low on booze? Visit the SPIRITS STORE.
🧋My instructions for sugar syrup, ice, grenadine, orgeat, etc are here.
🧑🏫 My 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS are here.
⚗️ My bottle recommendations are here.
📃 The full A-Z recipe archive is here.
➡️ Please find a round up of organisations helping Ukrainians here.
🏥 And here is a list of trusted charities who are helping people in Gaza.
🍒 And here is my favourite poem about maraschino cherries.
PLAYLIST
Before I get to the other stuff, for heaven’s sake: Quincy Jones, RIP, 1933-2024! Now there was a life. I mean who knows how much embellishment he put into those interviews… but this is a kid who grew up in post-Al Capone Chicago; who got a switchblade through his hand aged seven for straying into the wrong neighbourhood; who was so poor growing up, his mum sent him out to catch rats to eat ("She'd send us down to the waterfront and tell us, 'Just get the ones with their tails moving, because you know they're alive.”) Who witnessed that same mum sent to a lunatic asylum. But who managed to get out of that place. He knew Charlie Parker, he knew Miles Davis. He played at Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration. He scored heroin from Malcolm X. He counted Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra among his best friends. “Seven double Jack Daniel's an hour. Get out of here. … them motherfuckers invented partying." He makes Oprah’s favourite ribs. Ah, just read the goddam interview - honestly, producing Thriller for Michael Jackson is just one tiny part of it. And I swear, it will cheer you up. So will this Quincy playlist:
THIS PLAYLIST UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY EACH WEEK. The idea is, you download it and return to it each week in your Spotify. If there was an old song you’d like to hear again, you’ll find it RIGHT HERE in the ongoing archive of 2021 playlists.
WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING
I interviewed the whipsmart and - let’s face it - extremely hot Keri Russell, star of The Americans (excellent and underrated; available on Disney+) and also The Diplomat (silly but still quite fun; available on Netflix.) I liked what she had to say about wanting more joy in your life as you get older. “I never understand people in their 40s complaining about their age. The 40s is the best time. I feel like everything is just starting to work.” (California Style Magazine)
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
OK I know we like to keep it cocktail-friendly here - but sorry, 10,000 word Quincy profiles aside, I’ve been reading about Trump 2.0 and how the Democrats managed to blow it quite so spectacularly and how the billionaires keep winning. (That’s the running theme, isn’t it?! Isn’t it obvious?! Whoever loses, it’s never corporate America, is it?!)
It’s funny how this time the result cuts different. I was living in Los Angeles when Donald Trump won in 2016 - so I’ve been horrible flashbacks of having to write this terrible column in a Starbucks on Santa Monica Blvd in about 30 minutes as glass broke around me; followed up with a day of getting high on the beach. The mood then was one of panic and despair but also a kind of frenzied excitement. No one knew what this was going to look like. This time, it’s more like muted despondency. Resignation. A feeling of inevitability. Still, this - which my friend Ammu shared back in 2016 and my wife Johanna shared with me just now - struck me as quite wise:
One of the dangers is that people will… become demoralized and retreat into denial, that they will seek refuge amid the pleasures and fulfillments of private life. That would give carte blanche to power. There was a term used in central Europe to describe those who opted to retreat into private life under totalitarianism. They were called “internal emigres.” That is certainly tempting at a time like this: to live one’s life in the wholly private realm, enjoying the company of friends, good food and drink, the pleasures of literature and music, and so on. Privileged sectors of our society are already heavily skewed that way. It’s a real danger at a time like this. If we withdraw from public engagement now, we aid and abet that which we deplore.
The difficult balance is learning how to spread the good things in life, cocktails included - without retreating into internal emigration.
With that in mind, here are a few pieces that I’ve found useful, cathartic or just quite darkly funny.
Here’s Jia Tolentino on American gender. (New Yorker)
And the always shrewd Aditya Chakrabortty on Trump’s plans to rob the poor to feed the rich. (Guardian)
Sophie Wilkinson I thought was wise on “learned helplessness” and what Trump means for Britain (Vogue)
Here is environmental maverick Paul Kingsnorth on the unnatural alliance of progressive liberalism and corporate capitalism…. perhaps exemplified by Harris parading Dick Cheney on stage at every turn. (The Abbey of Misrule)
And Sam Kriss’s told-you-so is full of brutal lines. The nub: “The reason Kamala Harris lost is the same as the reason she was the candidate to begin with: the Democratic Party is allergic to democracy.” (Numb at the Lodge)
Here’s Ted Gioia on the tangential crisis of seriousness. (The Honest Broker)
And I’ve been haunted by this election-day piece on the eerie prophecies of Francis Fukuyama, who predicted that democracy would end not because of some terrible existential threat… but because everyone on the inside gets bored. “Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause… they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.” Makes you wonder if part of the reason Trump won isn’t because America is too poor - but because America is too rich. (Matt Pearce)
But remember: we still have music and love and romance.
OTHER BOTTLES YOU MIGHT ENJOY
🐿️ Amaretto
🧡 Aperol
🍑 Apricot Brandy
🕊️ Bénédictine
❄️ Brancamenta
☕ Coffee Liqueur
🍌 Crème de Banane
🍫 Crème de Cacao
🫐 Crème de Cassis
🌷 Cynar
🌸Elderflower Liqueur
🏝️ Falernum
🦅 Fernet-Branca
🌿 Green Chartreuse
🐻 Kümmel
🍒 Maraschino
🌵 Mezcal
🦙 Pisco
🐂 Sherry
🌻 Suze
SHOPPING LIST: I just took delivery of a really delicious bottle of rye whiskey so I think we should make something with that - some great things come out of the USA, after all. Are you ready? Rye (or bourbon), brandy, Italian vermouth, Bénédictine, Angostura bitters, Peychaud’s if you’ve got it.