75 Cocktail (1926 recipe)
Shake ∙ 3 min ∙ 27.6% ABV ∙
The 75 Cocktail is a shaken Calvados and London dry gin cocktail with a little grenadine and two dashes of absinthe, served up in a coupe.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Shake all ingredients with ice: Calvados 40 mlLondon dry gin 20 mlGrenadine syrup 5 mlAbsinthe 2 dashes
- Fine strain into the chilled glass
- Garnish with a star anise
Tips
- Calvados and gin make a strong base that needs water, so shake hard with plenty of ice for a full 12-15 seconds.
- The two dashes of absinthe go straight into the shaker, not into the glass as a rinse; that keeps the anise in the background behind the Calvados.
- Just 5 ml of grenadine tints the drink pink; pour more and it starts to cover the apple brandy and gin.
History
This "75" Cocktail is an early, Calvados-based ancestor of the French 75, credited to Scottish-born bartender Harry MacElhone. It appears under the title "75" Cocktail in a 1926 edition of his book Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails, built from Calvados, gin, grenadine, and absinthe. MacElhone had already recorded a "75" in a 1922 edition of the same book. That year Robert Vermeire also published a "75" recipe in his own book, Cocktails: How to Mix Them, though Vermeire's version added lemon juice rather than absinthe.
MacElhone described the drink as having been popular in France during the war, and named it for the French 75-millimeter light field gun used by the French army in World War I. The recipe and name later evolved further: in 1927 Judge Jr. published a version called French 75, made with gin, lemon juice, sugar, and champagne. This form was reprinted in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, which helped establish it as the standard recipe known today.
