The Cosmopolitan

[Chris Hennes]

Recipes for the Cosmopolitan seem to generally share the same ingredient list, but the ratios are profoundly different. Tonight I made Robert Hess's version, which is

• 1.5 oz citrus vodka
• .5 oz Cointreau
• 1 oz cranberry juice
• .75 oz lime juice

Here at eG I also see @JAZ has posted a recipe in RecipeGullet, and Dale DeGroff posted his from the Rainbow Room. I personally like Hess's inclusion of so much lime juice, but I'm a sucker for citrus. What are your preferences for this drink? Other favorite variations?

 

[Frederic]

My guests generally prefer drier drinks so I go with the one below  (not too dissimilar to Hess'). I recently went to an USBG event that was sponsored by a vodka company (we went on a field trip capped off by a bar visit that served the sponsor's product); two of us went with Cosmos, and the squirt of lime juice versus the ounce of triple sec made the thing an undrinkable candy bomb to me.

 

My go-to recipe at work is:

1 1/2 oz Vodka

1/2 oz Clement Creole Shrubb (or similar orange liqueur)

1/2 oz lime juice

1/2 oz Cranberry Juice

Shake with ice, strain into a cocktail coupe, and garnish with an orange twist.

[Chris Hennes]

Are you using a citrus vodka there, or unflavored?

[Frederic]

On 10/3/2017 at 6:58 PM, Chris Hennes said:

Are you using a citrus vodka there, or unflavored?

Most of the bars that I work at do not carry flavored vodka save for gin, so no.

At home, I do have a bottle of Ketel One Citron that I bought for my New Years Eve 2003 party. I was lured in by the Cobbler shaker that it was packaged with. I still have that bottle and the shaker has held true after 15 years.

The original Cosmo would have been made with random bar ingredients like vodka, Rose's Lime, triple sec, and a splash of grenadine (most like Rose's) as a pink Kamikaze. Toby Cecchini took credit for upgrading it to Absolut Citron, cranberry, and fresh lime juice. A lot of competing stories out there but his seems to hold the most weight (and he wrote a book called Cosmopolitan to lock it in).

[ClarenceGilbert]

Yeah, I also heard of this.