cameron's kick

1 oz Scotch (Buchanan's 12 Year)
1 oz Irish Whiskey (Teeling's Small Batch)
1/2 oz Lemon
1/2 oz Orgeat

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with an orange twist.

After working Valentine's Day, I needed to treat myself to a drink. In perusing Paul Clarke's The Cocktail Chronicles book, I spotted the Cameron's Kick that I have neglected to make over the last decade or so. The original recipe stems from Harry MacElhone's 1922 Harry's ABCs of Mixing Cocktails and strangely informed the reader that orgeat is a syrup made from almonds despite it having been used for decades in cocktails since perhaps first published in 1862 with the Japanese Cocktail.
The Cameron's Kick began with an orange, nutty, and smoke aroma. Lemon and malt on the sip pleasantly matched smoke and almond on the swallow. While Paul compared this drink to "one million monkeys and gave each of them a typewriter... well edit 'typewriter' to read 'cocktail shaker'," there were plenty of other drinks like the Rye Crusta that were a Whiskey Daisy with orgeat as the sweetener. However, the Cameron's Kick is rather unique for very few drinks split the spirits and paired Irish and Scottish whiskeys. And with rather good success here, I might add.