harry m. stevens cocktail

3/4 oz Light Rum (5/8 oz El Dorado 3 Year, 1/8 oz JM Rhum Blanc)
3/4 oz Dry Vermouth (Noilly Prat)
3/4 oz Apricot Brandy (Rothman & Winter)
3/4 oz Orange Juice
1/2 tsp Curaçao (Senior Curaçao)
1/2 tsp Grenadine

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime twist.

Two Saturdays ago, the Harry M. Stevens Cocktail recipe caught my eye; it was in the Big Bartender's Book and adapted from the Hotel Lincoln Cocktail Book published in Havana, Cuba, in 1937. Who was this Mr. Stevens? He was a New Yorker who debatably created the hotdog! At the turn of the century, Harry ran the ice cream and drink concessions at the New York City Polo Grounds where the New York Giants and New York Yankees baseball teams played. Around 1901, he realized that the spring was a bad time to be selling ice cream and he offered up sausages in a bun. Originally, he called them "red hot dachshund sausages" before switching to "hotdog."  Once people realized that there was not dog meat in them, their popularity at the stadium and across the country took off.
The Harry M. Stevens Cocktail offered up lime and apricot aromas. The sip presented the vermouth's wine and the orange juice flavors that came across in a dry but not citrus-crisp sort of way. Finally, the rum and apricot notes on the swallow rounded off the drink.