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Col. Roosevelt
Pare a lemon, cut it in two, add a large tablespoonful of sugar, then thoroughly muddle it; next add an ounce of tom gin, and 2 ounces of sweet cream, shake it thoroughly, strain into a fizz glass, and fill up with soda. Then take a bitters bottle of crême d'yvette, or abricotine, and make the letters C. R. on the top.
A cream fizz built on a muddled whole lemon, finished with a monogram drawn in colored liqueur. Most of the work is in getting the lemon right and the shake cold enough.
- Pare, then muddle"Pare" here means peel the lemon; the pared fruit halves are muddled with the sugar so the juice and the sugar dissolve together. The recipe does not say what becomes of the peel. Muddle hard enough to break the segments, then strain carefully -- pulp and seeds in the glass ruin the texture.
- Tom ginOld Tom gin, sweeter and rounder than London dry, and again widely stocked. London dry works but the drink will read sharper; cut the sugar slightly or accept a drier fizz.
- Shake with iceThe instruction says only "shake," but a cream fizz needs a hard shake with plenty of ice, roughly 12 to 15 seconds. Cream that is merely agitated at room temperature will not aerate and will sit flat under the soda.
- Fizz glassA small tumbler, commonly in the region of 6 to 8 oz in period usage. The drink is strained in and topped with soda from a siphon or a fresh bottle of seltzer, poured down the side to keep the head intact.
- Sweet creamPeriod "sweet cream" means fresh, unsoured cream, not sweetened cream. Use heavy or whipping cream; the 2 oz called for makes a rich drink, and half-and-half thins it noticeably.
- Crème d'Yvette and abricotineCrème Yvette is a violet liqueur, out of production for decades and available again since the late 2000s; crème de violette is the usual substitute. Abricotine is an apricot liqueur -- any apricot brandy of decent color will do. Both are used here purely for their color against the white foam.
- The bitters bottleA dasher bottle, the small stoppered bottle with a narrow spout that sits on the bar. It gives a fine enough stream to draw letters; a dropper or squeeze bottle serves the same purpose. Work quickly, while the foam is still firm.
- YieldOne drink.
Soda fountain and bar manuals of the early twentieth century were full of drinks named for public figures, and few figures were more nameable than Theodore Roosevelt -- the initials floated on the foam are the whole point of the recipe. The line between bar and fountain was in any case a porous one, and many establishments ran both from the same counter. The cream fizz itself belongs to the large family of fizzes that dominated American drink lists from the 1870s onward, and the decorative flourish -- writing on the head with a bitters bottle of brightly colored liqueur -- is a bit of showmanship that only works because a properly shaken cream fizz holds a stiff enough surface to draw on.