Turf Club (1935 recipe)
A dry and bitter gin cocktail ∙ Stir ∙ 3 min ∙ 23.4% ABV ∙
The Turf Club is a stirred cocktail of oude genever and sweet vermouth with a dash of Boker’s bitters, finished with an expressed lemon twist.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Stir all ingredients with ice: Oude genever 60 mlRosso vermouth 40 mlBoker’s bitters 1 dash
- Fine strain into the chilled glass
- Express a lemon twist over the cocktail and use as garnish
Tips
- Express the lemon twist over the surface; its oils cut through the malty genever and sweet vermouth.
History
The 1935 Turf Club comes from Albert Stevens Crockett's The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book, where the recipe, titled simply "Turf," calls for genever and Italian vermouth with a dash of bitters. It reflects the drink as it was reputedly poured at the old Waldorf-Astoria bar, and its genever base sets it apart from other historic versions such as the Turf Club (1895 recipe).
Turf Club is an umbrella name for a family of gin-and-vermouth cocktails first recorded in George Winter's 1884 How to Mix Drinks, making it, by some accounts, an early gin-and-vermouth ancestor alongside the Martinez. Later bartenders, including George Kappeler in 1895 and Harry Johnson in 1900, published differing recipes under the same name, swapping in Plymouth gin, maraschino, absinthe, or orange bitters, so the drink's exact original formula remains unsettled.
