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International Cocktail
Place in large glass two dashes each orange bitters and maraschino, half a wineglass each French vermouth and Plymouth gin, fill glass full of finely shaved ice, stir well with spoon, strain into a cocktail glass, putting in an olive, and serve.
A dry martini variation, and the measurements are easy to read once the period glassware is translated. Everything here is still available, though two of the ingredients have drifted in meaning.
- The wineglassA wineglass as a measure is conventionally 2 fl oz, so half a wineglass is 1 oz. That gives 1 oz dry vermouth to 1 oz gin — a 50/50 martini, far wetter than the modern default.
- DashesA dash from a bitters bottle is roughly 1/8 teaspoon. Two dashes of maraschino is a small quantity by design; it is there for perfume, not sweetness.
- French vermouthThis means dry white vermouth (Noilly Prat, Dolin), as opposed to "Italian," which meant sweet red. Buy a fresh bottle and refrigerate it; oxidised vermouth is the usual reason an old-style martini tastes flat.
- MaraschinoThe clear, dry cherry liqueur — Luxardo or Maraska — not the red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. The two are unrelated in flavour and the syrup will ruin the drink.
- Plymouth ginStill made, and worth using: it is softer and earthier than London dry, which is why it sits well against a full ounce of vermouth. A London dry works but will read sharper.
- Finely shaved iceFilling the glass with shaved ice and stirring dilutes fast. Modern practice is to stir with a few large cubes for about 30 seconds — cold, with restrained dilution. Shaved ice will water the drink if you stir long.
- The oliveGiven the maraschino and orange bitters, a lemon twist suits the drink better than brine and stone fruit. The original calls for an olive; both were common garnishes in the period and it is a matter of taste.
- YieldOne cocktail, roughly 2 oz before dilution. Scale by multiplying and stirring in a mixing glass, not a shaker.
Cocktails carrying national or geographic names were a fixture of hotel-bar practice around the turn of the twentieth century, when barmen in London, Paris and New York worked from broadly the same template — spirit, vermouth, bitters, a liqueur accent — and distinguished one drink from another by small substitutions. This one is essentially a dry martini with maraschino and orange bitters in place of plain bitters; the name signals cosmopolitan pedigree rather than any particular country, pairing English gin with French vermouth and a liqueur associated with the Dalmatian coast. The 50/50 gin-to-vermouth ratio is typical of the era, before the martini dried out over the following decades.