Turf Club cocktail in a coupe glass with an expressed lemon twist

Turf Club (1935 recipe)

Name: Turf Club (1935 recipe)
Prep time: 3 min
Total time: 3 min
Yield: 1 serving
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: Oude genever — 60 ml (2 oz); Rosso vermouth — 40 ml (1 1/3 oz); Boker’s bitters — 1 dash

Stir ∙ 3 min ∙ 25.5% ABV ∙

The Turf Club is a stirred spirit-forward cocktail built on Oude genever, sweet vermouth, and a dash of Boker's bitters, finished with an expressed lemon twist. Silky and dense on the tongue, with a malty backbone that softens into bittersweet warmth, finishing on a bright citrus-oiled snap.

Ingredients

Servings

Garnish

Lemon twist

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

Pre-chill the coupe before straining — the drink is served up with no ice, so a warm glass costs it its chill fast.
Stir over ice until well-chilled and diluted; genever's malty body needs the dilution to keep the drink from tasting heavy.
Express the lemon twist directly over the glass before dropping it in — the oils carry most of the aroma, not the peel itself.

History

This version of the Turf Club comes from Albert Stevens Crockett's 1935 The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book, where the recipe (there titled simply "Turf") calls for two-thirds genever to one-third Italian vermouth with a dash of Angostura bitters, reflecting the drink as it was reputedly poured at the old Waldorf-Astoria bar. This genever-forward build sets it apart from other historic versions of the same drink.

Turf Club is an umbrella name for a family of gin-and-vermouth cocktails first recorded as the "Turf Club" in George Winter's 1884 How to Mix Drinks, making it, by some accounts, an early ancestor combining gin and vermouth alongside the Martinez. Later 19th- and early 20th-century 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 and lineage remain unsettled. Crockett's 1935 genever-based rendition is one of several competing period versions rather than a single fixed original.