four flush cocktail

1/2 Bacardi Rum (1 oz El Dorado 3 Year)
1/4 Swedish Punsch (1/2 oz Homemade Ellestad Recipe)
1/4 Dry Vermouth (1/2 oz Noilly Prat)
1 dash Grenadine (1 barspoon Mulberry Syrup)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

On Sunday night (now almost 2 weeks ago), I reached for my new acquisition of Hyman Gale's The How and When from 1938 (well mine is a 1945 reprint). The book was recommended a while back by Ted Haigh in a DrinkBoston post, and I finally spotted it online for cheap on Amazon's used book section. Well, it was a semi-new purchase for it arrived right before we left for Tales of the Cocktail and sat there patiently until we got back.
The drink that called out to me that night was the Four Flush Cocktail which can also be found in the Savoy Cocktail Book amongst other places. The name, while sounding slightly scatological, refers to the poker hand where 4 of the 5 cards are all of the same suit and the player has a little under 20% chance of completing the flush proper. For this drink, we used a slightly more flavorful rum than today's Bacardi, namely El Dorado 3 Year, but one that might not have been as flavorful as the Bacardi of the book's era which was somewhere between a Cuban and a Martinician rum. Moreover, instead of grenadine, I used mulberry syrup which contributed to the drink's aroma besides donating a richer color than most grenadines; perhaps the grenadine's color was meant to symbolize a string of hearts or diamonds cards. The sip was sweet and lightly flavored, while the swallow was full of vermouth and the punsch's Batavia Arrack and spices which dried out the balance considerably. The Four Flush Cocktail seems like it should be more natural of a citrus drink instead of a dry vermouth one, but the vermouth did give it a degree of elegance.