Gustings’ Grasshopper
A sweet and creamy liqueur cocktail ∙ Dry shake ∙ 5 min ∙ 17.7% ABV ∙
Gustings' Grasshopper is a creamy after-dinner cocktail of layered crème de menthe and crème de cacao with a little cognac, dry-shaken with heavy cream. Mint leads and lingers, chocolate rounds out the middle, and the cream turns the whole thing plush and dessert-like, with only a faint brandy warmth underneath.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Dry shake all ingredients without ice: Cognac (brandy) 5 mlCrème de Menthe green 15 mlCrème de Menthe white 10 mlBrown crème de cacao 15 mlWhite Crème de Cacao 30 mlDouble cream/heavy cream 70 ml
- Fine strain into the chilled glass
- Garnish with a mint leaf
History
The Gustings' Grasshopper is the personal recipe of Paul Gustings, a career New Orleans bartender who spent roughly fifteen of his three decades in the trade behind the bar at Tujague's, the French Quarter restaurant credited as the birthplace of the Grasshopper. After a stint at another local institution, Broussard's, Gustings returned to Tujague's and brought his own, more elaborate take on the house drink back with him.
Where the standard Grasshopper is built from just crème de menthe, crème de cacao, and cream, Gustings layers in both white and dark crème de cacao, both green and white crème de menthe, a touch of brandy, and a generous pour of heavy cream. The mix is batched in advance and kept refrigerated behind the bar, then dry-shaken without ice to order and strained into a Champagne flute — a distinctive house method that trades the icy chill of a standard shaken cocktail for a smoother, denser texture.
The Grasshopper itself is generally traced to Tujague's, where proprietor Philip Guichet Jr. is said to have created it around 1918 or 1919, reportedly winning second place with it at a cocktail competition in New York — though no documentary evidence has surfaced to confirm either the win or his authorship.
