Bobby Burns

The Bobby Burns is a Scotch-based riff on the Manhattan, traditionally built from Scotch whisky, sweet vermouth, and a small measure of Bénédictine. It surfaced as the “Baby Burns” in the Bishop & Babcock Company's 1900 guide, Fancy Drinks. By the 1900s and 1910s the drink was appearing under the name “Robert Burns” — in the 1908 Jack's Manual and the 1914 Drinks — made instead with Irish whiskey, vermouth, and absinthe. That build carried into the more informally named “Bobby Burns” of Hugo Ensslin's 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks. Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book replaced the Irish whiskey with Scotch and fixed the now-standard formula of Scotch, sweet vermouth, and Bénédictine. Through that book the name reached wide fame.

The drink's connection to the poet Robert Burns is itself disputed. Albert Stevens Crockett, who named it “Robert Burns” in his 1931 Old Waldorf Bar Days, suggested it might instead honor a cigar salesman, or simply a brand of cigars sold near the old Waldorf-Astoria, rather than the poet. Regardless, the drink became linked to Burns Night, the January 25 celebration of the poet's birthday.

David A. Embury's 1948 The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks described the Bobby Burns as a variation on the Rob Roy finished with a dash of Drambuie in place of the more common Bénédictine, the same Scotch-and-Drambuie pairing at the heart of the Rusty Nail.