Bronx Cocktail

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

1½ oz. London dry gin

½ oz. sweet vermouth

½ oz. dry vermouth

1 oz. fresh orange juice

Chill a cocktail glass in the freezer.

Place all of the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, fill it two-thirds of the way with ice, and shake until chilled.

Double-strain into the chilled glass and enjoy.

Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.

The Bronx Cocktail is not specifically mentioned in The Great Gatsby, but in 1914, a young Fitzgerald had sent a telegram to his new girlfriend, extolling the wonders of the drink, claiming that he and his friend drank several in a row. Given that freshly squeezed orange juice is a key ingredient in this cocktail, it’s entirely possible that this was the drink that Fitzgerald had in mind when he wrote that Gatsby was having large amount of citrus delivered.

Most often a blend of gin and sweet and dry vermouth with orange juice, legend says that the drink was created in the early 1900s and named for the Bronx Zoo. But wherever it came from, it’s sure to be enjoyable, even without Gatsby’s lavish parties and productions as a backdrop.