old pal

1/3 Canadian Whisky (1 oz Old Overholt 86° Rye)
1/3 Dry Vermouth (1 oz Noilly Prat)
1/3 Campari (1 oz)

Stir with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.

While writing up the Nearly Headless Nickroni, I made reference in the text to the Old Pal and realized that I still had never written up the drink here. Through the years, I have made mention of it such as in the Perfect Pal and Good Buddy, and now it was time to fix the recipe's absence. The Old Pal was first mentioned in the 1927 Barflies and Cocktails where it was attributed to Harry MacElhone's old pal "Sparrow" Robertson except with "Eyetalian" vermouth instead of the French style that it became associated with; this is odd for the Boulevardier appears two pages before in that section with the same makeup but with Bourbon instead of Canadian Club. Various books like the PDT Cocktail Book attribute the recipe to the 1922 Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails, but the 1923 edition of that book on EUVS lacks the recipe; it does appear though in the updated version that added recipes in 1986 listing the source as "Sparrow Robinson, Sporting Editor, New York Herald Tribune, 1929" still with Canadian whisky but finally with dry vermouth as the aromatized wine. It is odd that it lists 1929 which is two years after it was mentioned in Barflies and Cocktails (albeit with a different style of vermouth) Modern cocktail books such as the ones published by PDT and Death & Co. switched the whiskey to American rye, and the latter book added a lemon twist to the otherwise ungarnished equation.The Old Pal without a garnish proffered a rye and bitter orange aroma. Next, caramelized orange peel notes on the sip befriended rye and bitter orange flavors on the swallow. Overall, the Old Pal was more stark than the Boulevardier due to not only the decreased sugar content to allow the bitterness to shine through more but the lack of the roundness and complexity donated by sweet vermouth; as a result, the Old Pal seemed like a better aperitif choice of the two.