100 Proof: The Dawn of the American Cocktail (Episode 2)
Proof
America's Test Kitchen
4.4 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2024
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where does the word "cocktail" come from? Who invented it? We explore these questions and the backstories of two drinks from America's early days as a nation: The Mint Julep and the Sazerac. (Special thanks to Joe Gitter and Yiorgos Tsivranidis for their voice acting in this episode.)
Try making our Mint Julep and Sazerac recipes at home!
Further Reading:
"A Brief History of Bitters" Smithsonian Magazine by Peter Smith
Difford's Guide for Discerning Drinkers
"The Ice King was a Tudor" Wall Street Journal by Eric Felten
"NEW ORLEANS: A TIMELINE OF ECONOMIC HISTORY" Tulane University by Richard Campanella
The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails (Edited by David Wondrich & Noah Rothbaum)
Travels of four years and a half in the United States of America by John Davis
Whenham Great Pond by John C. Phillips from The Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
"Who Is the Real Father of the Cocktail?" The Daily Beast by Philip Greene
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There off in the Kentucky Derby. |
| 0:07.5 | The Kentucky Derby. The Kentucky Derby. |
| 0:09.2 | Every year, more than 150,000 people |
| 0:12.4 | travel to Churchill Downs to witness the horses in action. |
| 0:16.0 | The domestic product, |
| 0:18.0 | Rambo the First, and Japan's for every young dog on the inside. |
| 0:21.0 | And every year, the sound of horse hooves hitting the dirt is punctuated by the |
| 0:27.1 | sound of straws hitting crushed ice in metal mint julocups. According to Churchill Downs, around 125,000 Mint Juleps are sold every year |
| 0:38.0 | over the racing weekend. Kentucky, of course, is known for bourbon, the mid-julip has been the official cocktail of the Kentucky Derby since 1939. |
| 0:49.0 | But the bluegrass state is not where the drink originated. |
| 0:54.0 | Nor was Bourbon the original spirit that went into a mint jewel. |
| 0:58.0 | Sierra Leone is coming. |
| 1:00.0 | The street letting down to the wire |
| 1:02.0 | who's it going to be? |
| 1:04.0 | Oh, the football of the derby! |
| 1:06.0 | Oh, it's the ball that was in Miss Big Ten. |
| 1:08.0 | It turns out that a lot of cocktail history is like that. You think a cocktail |
| 1:16.2 | started off this way, but if you dig a little deeper, the origins aren't |
| 1:20.5 | actually as clear-cut. What we do know is that while the Brits may have been |
| 1:25.1 | the first to document the cocktail, it was the Americans who put their own spin on |
| 1:30.0 | the craft and took the cocktail to new heights. the |
| 1:35.0 | Cogtail to New Heights. Today on 100 Proof from America's test kitchen, |
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