French 75

The French 75 takes its name from the French 75mm field gun, the rapid-firing artillery piece that was the mainstay of the French army in World War I, though who first mixed the drink and attached that name to it remains disputed. A cocktail called the "75" or "Soixante-Quinze" was circulating among Parisian bars and American expatriates as early as 1915, and it was first recorded in print in Robert Vermeire's 1922 book "Cocktails: How to Mix Them," which credited it to bartender Harry MacElhone. MacElhone had also listed a "75" in his own 1922 "Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails." That earliest version, however, was made with gin, Calvados, grenadine, and sometimes absinthe, not the gin-lemon-sugar-Champagne combination known today, and some accounts instead credit Henry Tépé of Henry's Bar in Paris with the original mix.

The drink reached its now-classic recipe and the "French 75" name in "Here's How" by Judge Jr. in 1927, and this version was republished in Harry Craddock's "The Savoy Cocktail Book" in 1930, which helped cement its popularity. It was further popularized in the United States at the Stork Club in New York, while some later books, such as David A. Embury's "The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks," substituted cognac for gin.