The cocktail has the distinction of being an original American drink.
Its origins are murky, but the most common accounts name one Antoine Amedee Peychaud, a young Creole from a distinguished French family, as the originator of the drink.
Peychaud, along with wealthy plantation owners, fled his home in the French controlled portion of the island of Hispaniola during the slave uprisings of 1793.
Peychaud, trained as an apothecary, settled in New Orleans and set up shop in the French Quarter. Along with his education, he had salvaged an old secret family recipe for the compounding of a liquid tonic called bitters.
The bitters were good for whatever ailed you. And they added zest to the cognac brandy he served friends and others who wandered into his pharmacy.
Fame of the concoction spread. Soon the ubiquitous New Orleans coffee houses, as liquor dispensing establishments were then called, were offering their French brandy spiked…show more content… Fill one with cracked ice and allow it to chill. In the other, place a lump of sugar with just enough water to moisten it.
The saturated loaf of sugar is then crushed with a barspoon. Add a few drops of Peychaud's bitters, a dash of Angostura, and a jigger of rye whiskey.
Add add several lumps of ice to the glass containing sugar, bitters, and rye and stir. Never use a shaker!
Empty the ice from the first glass, dash in several drops of absinthe, twirl the glass and shake out the absinthe ... enough will cling to the glass to add the needed flavor.
Strain the whiskey mixture into this glass, twist a piece of lemon peel over it for the needed zest of that small drop of oil thus extracted from the peel, but do not commit the sacrilege of dropping the peel into the drink.
