The Spirits #56: The Gimlet
~ The Great Lime Schism ~ Betty Draper's Jell-O Salads ~ The Underwater Cathedral ~ Barbados Revisited ~
~ THE GIMLET ~
60ml gin
15ml lime cordial
Freeze your glassware. Fill a mixing vessel with ice. Gimlets should be unbelievably cold. Stir the gin and cordial with the ice until you perceive that which is imperceptible (should take 25-30 seconds). Strain the drink into your frozen glass. Garnish with lime. Or just serve it naked, I dare you.
Some Gimlet Notes:
1) A stone-cold classic, this one. The canonical lime cordial is Rose’s, and the canonical ratio - at least according to Raymond Chandler - is one part gin to one part Rose’s. (“A real gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats Martinis hollow.”). These proportions are both insane and disgusting to my palate. I would counsel a more Martini-like 4:1 ratio of gin to cordial, though by all means, you do you.
2) There are actually two schools of Gimlet. There is the classic cordial Gimlet, made as above. But then there is the Fresh Lime Gimlet, a gin-lime sour. Say: 50ml gin, 15ml lime juice and 10ml golden sugar syrup, shaken. (That’s actually what’s in the picture). See below for a fuller prising apart of the two Gimlet schools. Both, in my opinion, have their place.
3) The Fresh Lime Gimlet in particular benefits from a little variation. Fresh muddled mint, basil, tarragon, etc - these are handsome additions. As are green cardamom pods, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, etc. But perhaps best of all? Three or four slices of cucumber and a pinch of salt, lightly muddled and added to the shaker. Celery is good too. Honest.
WELCOME BACK! Did you miss me? Did you did you did you? Well I certainly missed you.
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I am the journalist Richard Godwin and this is my cocktail newsletter. You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, orgeat ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations here. And here is an index of all cocktails featured thus far, searchable by ingredient. Scroll to the bottom of this page to find out what to get in for next week’s special.
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THE GIMLET is one of those cocktails I periodically forget about and then remember and wonder how I ever let it slip out of my life. Such finesse! Such élan! When made properly, it has a similar alchemy to the Martini. Even if his proportions were way out of whack, Raymond Chandler was not wrong in this. The ice melts, the gin curtseys and there’s a slight give in the fabric of the universe.
(Hello again, by the way - I’ll explain later. Or maybe not at all.)
Why do I periodically forget this majestic beverage? I think it might have something to do with a bifurcated attention span, for the Gimlet is, conceptually, two cocktails. There is the lime cordial version; and then there is the fresh lime version. I oscillate between one and the other, like Sophie in Sophie’s Choice, unable to say which child I would save from the oubliette.
The cordial Gimlet is the original Gimlet. Rose’s Lime Cordial dates back to the 19th century. It was invented by a Scottish shipping person named Lauchlan Rose to take advantage of the famous 1867 decree that all British ships must carry lime juice in order to prevent scurvy. Rose patented a cordial that used sugar,as opposed to alcohol, as a preservative and, so, the Gimlet became a class naval cocktail. It was named after a tool used for piercing barrels (hence, gimlet-eyed, eyes that bore into you). Or possibly it was named after Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Desmond Gimlette. Who knows? But apparently, the officers would drink Gimlets, and the ratings would drink Grog.
So that’s the authentic way. But then again, I always wonder, what relation the modern (Coca-Cola-owned) Rose’s bears to the lime cordial that your average 19th century boatswain would have mixed with his Naval-Strength? And I’m assuming those officers were sipping their Gimlets lukewarm as opposed to optimially chilled. Such is a difference between authentic and classic. The really classic Gimlet is much closer to the Chandler version, more of a glamorous mid-20th century drink. The taste of lime cordial makes me think of my dear late Nanna’s house - she was very much a pickled beetroot and blancmange sort of hostess. It also makes me think of Betty Draper in Mad Men, who is often seen sipping a Gimlet. Lime, I recently learned, was the preferred flavour for the era’s famedJell-O salads:
But then again, considering the lime cordial is really just a way of preserving limes in sugar; and considering we are not at this moment charting a course to New Holland aboard a Royal Navy three-decker; and nor are we having our husband’s colleagues over for Lime Cheese Salad, c.1963… why not just cut to the chase and make a Fresh Lime Gimlet? Considering the low-esteem in which acid-green industrial syrups are held among craft bartending types, this is what you are more likely to encounter in a modern bar. More often than not, you will find it slightly fiddled with. The Basil Gimlet was a key drink of the mid-00s cocktail revival in San Francisco, for example, while the Juliet & Romeo is a very fancy Gimlet, shaken with fresh mint, cucmber and a pinch of salt - with drops of rosewater and Angostura bitters by way of garnish.
There is absolutely nothing not to like about a Fresh Lime Gimlet. I made mine with Adnam’s Avocado Leaf gin and it was amazing. But I have a real weakness for the cordial version too. To my mind, the crucial ingredient here isn’t the gin, lime or sugar but actually the citric acid - the crucial preservative in cordials and squashes of all kinds. It gives the cocktail a certain steely modernist bite that fresh lime can’t quite match. You can buy citric acid in most decent grocers, actually (sometimes sold as ‘lemon salt’) and it’s quite the taste sensation if you put it neat on your tongue. You can use it make your own lime cordial if you like - there’s a recipe in my book, ahem - or, more to the point, any kind of cordial you desire and, by extension, any kind of Gimlet you desire. Rhubarb? Elderflower? Apple? Many futures are possible.
📚 THE SPIRITS (i.e. the book that inspired this newsletter) is available once more! You can find it at: Bookshop.org, Foyles, Blackwells, Hive, Waterstones, Amazon and even WH Smith. Makes a nice Valentine’s present📚
PLAYLIST
This week’s theme is: THE SEA, THE SEA! In honour of the Gimlet’s maritime origins, you understand. Now, a content warning. Ordinarily, I try to keep these playlists reasonably ‘upbeat’ in order that they are cocktail hour appropriate. However, I’ve been in a rather oceanic mood of late and so many of my favourite pieces of music inspired by the sea are rather saline themselves. And sea shanties are much better in theory than they are in practise. So I hope you don’t mind - this one contains a fair bit of classical(!) and is perhaps better suited to drifting into the sunset on a raft. But it still sounds just swell with a Gimlet in hand.
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 playlists.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
Too much to list since we last spoke!
But you might like this article I wrote about my time in Barbados (The Times)
And here’s my interview w/ Brits Rising Star Holly Humberstone from the impressively new look (ES Magazine)
SHOPPING LIST
Gin (or, vodka), rose water (or dried rose petals), lemon juice, sugar, egg white, absinthe. One for the lovers.