Based on a review of vintage recipes, the “old-fashioned” historically referred to a specific way of making the now defunct-in-name “whiskey cocktail,” as there was a time when cocktail books had recipes for both the old-fashioned and the whiskey cocktail. They were essentially the same drink, except the whiskey cocktail was sweetened with gomme syrup (simple syrup with the addition of Gum Arabic) and strained into a new glass after being chilled; whereas the old-fashioned was built in the glass in which it was to be served and sweetened with a muddled sugar cube.
It was not until the last decade of the nineteenth century that we find the “old-fashioned,” at least by that name, in the cocktail recipe books with the publication of The Mixicologist by C.F. Lawlor and Modern American Drinks by George Keppler, both of which were published in 1895. It’s worth mentioning here that Keppler treats the old-fashioned as a variant of the classic whiskey cocktail.
After Lawlor and Keppler, the old-fashioned was regularly included in recipe books. However, there was a twenty-year period, which spanned the last decade of the nineteenth century and into the second decade of the twentieth century, where the old-fashioned appeared alongside the whiskey cocktail as a particular way of making the latter. The old-fashioned was built in the glass from a lump of sugar while the whiskey cocktail was sweetened with gum or simple syrup and crafted in a mixing glass to be strained over fresh ice. C.F. Lawler’s book, Harry Johnson’s Bartender’s Manual (1900), Tim Daly’s Bartender’s Encyclopedia (1903), John Applegreen’s Bar Book (1904), Paul Lowe’s Drinks As They Are Mixed (1904), and the Bartender’s Association of America’s Bartender’s Manual (1913) are examples of pre-prohibition cocktail books that made such a differentiation between the old-fashioned and the whiskey cocktail.
The photographs above are from the Bartender’s Manual from The American Bartender’s Association, published in 1913.
Eventually, the whiskey cocktail disappeared from the cocktail books. Many of today’s recipes for the old-fashioned would have been classified as the whiskey cocktail based on the early twentieth-century rubric. When the old-fashioned first entered the cocktail recipe books, the ritual of dissolving a lump of sugar with bitters and spirit and building the drink in the glass in which it was served is what made the old-fashioned distinct from the whiskey cocktail.
There was a time in history when a cocktail was a specific drink rather than a generic term for any mixed drink. Jerry Thomas, for instance, never regarded a julep or a toddy as a cocktail. For Thomas and bartenders of his era, a cocktail was a specific drink made by sweetening a fine spirit with a touch of gomme syrup, flavored with a dash or two of aromatic bitters, and then chilling and diluting the concoction with ice. Jerry Thomas published The Bar-tender’s Guide in 1862. It was the first authoritative treatise on the topic of mixed alcoholic drinks ever written. Other bartenders started following suit, releasing their own barkeep and recipe guides. No less than 24 books were published on the topic between Thomas’s seminal book and C.F. Lawler’s The Mixologist, published in 1895, where we first find recipes for the whiskey cocktail and old-fashioned published together.
After Thomas published his book and as the nineteenth century progressed mixologists began publishing recipes with drinks labeled “cocktails” with an increasing number of ingredients. One theory for the old-fashioned is that bar patrons started to use the term an “old-fashioned whiskey cocktail” to convey to barkeeps that they wanted a whiskey cocktail made the old way without any fancy additives—just an old-fashioned whiskey cocktail.
It’s a curious thing that nearly all nineteenth-century recipes for the whiskey cocktail call for gomme syrup—beginning with Jerry Thomas’ original manual.
When Lawlor and Keppler published their recipes, The old-fashioned cocktail was a relatively new way of making the whiskey cocktail. It’s likely that the ritual of laboriously stirring or muddling lumps of sugar simply felt old-fashioned. The idea may have also been conflated with an elixir called rock & rye. Though rock & rye is more properly a cordial than a cocktail, it allegedly began from the practice of bar patrons sweetening their whiskey with lumps of sugar. It’s also, perhaps, ironic that early recipes for rock & rye cordial, such as the one published in 1888 by Harry Johnson’s New and Improved Bartender’s Guide called for rock & rye to be sweetened with “rock candy syrup.”
The truth of the matter:
Modern recipe books more often than not call for the old-fashioned to be crafted in a mixing glass with simple syrup. This was the recipe for the “whiskey cocktail” and such a concoction would not have been a proper old-fashioned when the old-fashioned first appeared in the recipe books. If keeping true to original recipes is important, a proper old-fashioned is made with a lump of sugar and built-in the glass from which it is to be served (if you’re using simple syrup then you’re making a whiskey cocktail). There you have it–the historical truth!
Modern recipe books more often than not call for the old-fashioned to be crafted in a mixing glass with simple syrup. This was the recipe for the “whiskey cocktail” and such a concoction would not have been a proper old-fashioned when the old-fashioned first appeared in the recipe books.
The modern barkeep’s perspective:
Setting aside all objectivity, I’m not sure there is much discernible taste difference between simple syrup and directly dissolving the sugar into the spirit. However, in theory, the simple syrup would increase the dilution of the overall concoction due to its water content but this is probably negligible to the dilution of the ice. Bartenders generally appreciate using syrup for the economy of time. Though I don’t mind dissolving a bar-spoon of sugar or muddling a sugar cube, I am opposed to building my old-fashioned in the glass the absolute traditional way because if the concoction is not first chilled by stirring it in a mixing glass, the room-temperature whiskey will shatter my otherwise crystal clear ice cube when poured over the cube.