puritan cocktail

2 1/4 Junipero Gin
1/2 oz Noilly Prat Dry vermouth
1/4 oz Yellow Chartreuse
1 dash Angostura Orange Bitters

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

On Tuesday night after a biotech networking event, Andrea and I went down the street to Drink where we found seats at Misty Kalkofen's bar. When Misty asked what I was in the mood for, I commented that it had been a while since I had drank gin and I left the recipe open to her (classic, new, or improvised) as long as it was one I had not tasted before. Misty replied "The Puritan" without missing a beat.
Misty described the drink as "if a classic Martini and an Alaska had a baby." While Misty found this recipe in Boothby's World Drinks and How to Mix Them, apparently the drink was created a few years earlier at the end of the nineteenth century. According to Lowell Edmund's history, Martini, Straight Up: The Classic American Cocktail, the Puritan first appeared in a book published in Boston in 1900 entitled The Cocktail Book: A Sideboard Manual for Gentlemen by Fredrick L. Knowles as a precursor to the modern dry Martini. That recipe was essentially a Marguerite (the 1896 recipe of 2:1 Plymouth gin to dry vermouth with orange bitters) with Yellow Chartreuse added, and was perhaps named after its dryness and austerity. Misty commented that she enjoyed the Puritan over an Alaska since the dry vermouth helped to save the balance from being cloyingly sweet. Indeed, the drink was rather dry and had a great mingling of lemon, dry vermouth, and Chartreuse flavors.