Select Page

1890s Cocktail: The Old Fashioned

The Charlotte Community Library is turning 130 years old! To celebrate, the library will be creating a series of blogs. One set of blogs will look at the history of cocktails and alcohol use in the Charlotte area. Another set will look at the history of Charlotte and the surrounding area. Our blogs will begin with the 1890s and progress decade by decade until we reach today.

But that’s not all! There will also be recipes included with each of our cocktail blogs. These recipes will be modern versions of historic drinks. And when possible, alcohol-free recipes will be shared too.

The 1890s were a time of fighting in the Charlotte area. Spirits of the Past says the people of Eaton County voted to make drinking and selling alcohol illegal in January 1892. However, it was hard to enforce the law, as alcohol was for sale in the towns around Charlotte. Alcohol was also used for medicine during this time, making it even easier for people to get. Still, in 1895 the people of Eaton County voted a second time to keep alcohol illegal.

By 1899, residents of Charlotte changed their minds and made alcohol legal to drink and sell again. Efforts to keep alcohol out of the city had failed, and people wanted things to go back to normal. But those against alcohol (known collectively as Prohibitionists) would not give up. In 1902, selling and drinking alcohol was once again made illegal in Eaton County. Clearly, neither side was willing to give up without a fight.

Moving on from local history to recipes, what people know today as cocktails didn’t exist in the 1890s. These drinks were simpler (and sometimes deadlier) than what we know today. A previous version of the Old-Fashioned cocktail was available for people to drink during the 1890s. For the sake of convenience and taste, we will be sharing updated recipes with our readers. Below are modern recipes for the Old-Fashioned cocktail, the first taken from Colleen Graham’s post on The Spruce Eats:

Ingredients:

  • 1 sugar cube, or 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 3 dashes of bitters
  • 2 ounces ​bourbon or rye whiskey
  • Orange peel
  • Maraschino cherry, for decoration
  • Ice
  • An old-fashioned style glass

 

How to prepare:

  1. Gather your ingredients
  2. Place a sugar cube or sugar in an old-fashioned glass and saturate it with bitters. Muddle or stir to mix.
  3. Add the whiskey, fill the glass with ice, and stir well.
  4. Express the orange peel over the drink before dropping it into the glass: Twist up the peel and give it a good squeeze (directed toward the glass, not your eyes) and bits of citrus oil will spray into the drink.
  5. Add a cherry if you like.

 

For those of us who aren’t fans of alcohol, there are alternative recipes. For example, this one taken from Simple Mocktail Recipes:

Ingredients

  • 2 cups hot water
  • 1 black tea bag of choice
  • 4 sugar cubes or 4 teaspoons simple syrup
  • 4 orange slices
  • 8 dashes non-alcoholic bitters or Old-Fashioned syrup mix
  • Ice
  • 4 Maraschino cherries, for decoration

Instructions

  1. Make the black tea ahead of time by steeping the tea bag in hot water for five minutes. Remove the tea bag and set aside until ready to make the drinks.
  2. Place one sugar cube or a teaspoon of simple syrup at the bottom of each glass.
  3. Fill each glass with an orange slice.
  4. Add two dashes of bitters or an old-fashioned syrup replacement to each glass.
  5. In the bottom of the glass, muddle together.
  6. Fill each glass halfway with ice.
  7. Pour the tea into each glass (you’ll probably have leftover tea).
  8. Stir several times.
  9. Finish with a cherry.

 

And with that, we have come to the end of our first cocktail blog. Please join us next month as we examine the 1900s and explore more recipes from the past. Thank you for reading!

 

Resources Consulted:

Graham, Colleen. “Dress up Your Bourbon (or Rye) in the Old-Fashioned.” The Spruce Eats, February 9, 2024. https://www.thespruceeats.com/old-fashioned-cocktail-recipe-and-history-759328.

Hands T. Drinking in Victorian and Edwardian Britain: Beyond the Spectre of the Drunkard [Internet]. Cham (CH): Palgrave Macmillan; 2018. Chapter 9, Doctor’s Orders: A Prescription to Drink. 2018 June 19. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK524982/ doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-92964-4_9

“The Past and Present of Eaton County, Michigan, Historically Together with Biographical Sketches of its Leading and Prominent Citizens and Illustrious Dead.” In the digital collection Michigan County Histories and Atlases. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ARX3600.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed July 28, 2024.

The State of Michigan. “Michigan Official Directory and Legislative Manual for the Years … 1917/18.” HathiTrust. Accessed July 28, 2024. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39076001176648&seq=1.

“8 Non-Alcoholic Old Fashioned Recipes: Simple Mocktail Recipes.” Simple Mocktail Recipes, June 27, 2024. https://simplemocktailrecipes.com/non-alcoholic-old-fashioned/.

 

 

Pin It on Pinterest