West Indian Cocktail
1 Teaspoonful Sugar in medium-sized Tumbler. (1 teaspoon Small Hand Foods Gum)
4 Dashes Angostura. (4 dashes angostura bitters)
1 Teaspoonful Lemon Juice. (1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice)
1 Glass Burrough’s Beefeater Gin. (2 oz Beefeater Gin)
1 Lump of ice.
Stir and serve in same glass.

Oddly, we run into a spate of “West Indian” attributed cocktails in the Double Youse. This one appears to originate in Harry McElhone’s 1928 “ABC of Cocktails”.

Like the original Pegu Club or the Crustas, this is an actual Cock-Tail with only a minor amount of citrus, not a sour. Heck, they even tell you to stir this one!

I also like the rather large proportion of bitters given for this recipe. 4 Dashes! Woo!

Gives lie to those that say, “If you can taste the bitters, it is a bad cocktail.”

In the West Indian Cocktail, the bitters are a major flavor element of the cocktail.

Others might disagree, but I rather enjoyed it, not at all dissimilar to something along the lines of the ‘Ti Punch. Like that drink, I could see how this would be pleasant on a hot day in the West Indies, preferably with the trade winds blowing up, and a bit of salt sea spray in the air.

This post is one in a series documenting my ongoing effort to make all of the cocktails in the Savoy Cocktail Book, starting at the first, Abbey, and ending at the last, Zed.