leave it to me

1 2/3 oz Old Tom Gin (Hayman's)
1/3 oz Maraschino Liqueur (Luxardo)
1/3 oz Raspberry Syrup (Homemade)
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
1 barspoon Powdered Sugar

Stir sugar with lemon juice until dissolved. Add rest of ingredients and ice, shake, and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon slice.

On Wednesday evening, I was flipping through my English translated copy of Bariana: A Practical Compendium of All American and British Drinks, a French cocktail book written in 1896. The book had sat on my shelf for a bit due to frustration that many of the recipes call for Crème de Noyaux which was added dash-wise along with bitters. Crème de Noyaux was a once prevalent liqueur made from the stone kernels of apricots and sometimes peach and cherry; however, with the fears of the cyanide produced from its digestion (specifically the amygdalin molecules), the product has disappeared from the American market (save for artificially flavored versions). Or perhaps it was due to recipes like the Pink Squirrel falling out favor around the same time.

Having gotten over that frustration (sans receiving authentic liqueur from France) or at least enough to proceed, I decided to make the Leave it to Me cocktail which lacks this semi-lost spirit in the ingredients list. The name probably stemmed from the answer to the conversation, "What are you having?" "I don't know.", especially since the I Don't Know (also known as I.D.K.) cocktail name was spoken for. The Leave it to Me falls in the Daisy camp along with the 1933 Cosmopolitan, the Margarita, and the Gin Daisy. Daisies are essential Sours with the sugar or simple syrup portion swapped for a sweet liqueur (including orange liqueurs and yellow Chartreuse) or fruit syrup (like grenadine); often times Daisies are served as tall drinks with the addition of soda water.
The Leave it to Me turned out a beautiful cloudy watermelon color from the raspberry syrup and lemon juice components. The drink had a fruity tartness at the beginning of the sip with a Maraschino liqueur bitterness accompanying the gin's botanicals at the swallow. The transfer from tart to bitter from the lemon and Maraschino, respectively, was rather intriguing. The annotation for the drink mentions how "raspberry and Maraschino is a very well-known combination, and it works beautiful as a Sour with Old Tom Gin." This pairing was more obvious as the drink warmed up and the raspberry notes came more to the forefront.