Turf Club cocktail in a coupe glass with a maraschino cherry

Turf Club (1939 recipe)

Name: Turf Club (1939 recipe)
Prep time: 3 min
Total time: 3 min
Yield: 1 serving
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: Old Tom gin — 30 ml (1 oz); London dry gin — 30 ml (1 oz); Dry vermouth — 20 ml (2/3 oz); Bianco vermouth — 10 ml (1/3 oz); Maraschino liqueur — 5 ml (1/6 oz); Chilled water — 5 ml (1/6 oz); Absinthe — 5 ml (1/6 oz); Abbott's bitters — 2 dashes; Saline solution — 1 dash

Stir ∙ 3 min ∙ 29.8% ABV ∙

The Turf Club stirs Old Tom and London dry gin over a dual-vermouth base with a touch of maraschino and a whisper of absinthe. Silky and cold, with a faint herbal lift on the nose and a lingering bittersweet finish rounded by a delicate hint of salt.

Ingredients

Servings

Garnish

Maraschino cherry

Instructions for 1 serving

Pre-chill a glass
Stir all ingredients with ice: Old Tom gin 30 mlLondon dry gin 30 mlDry vermouth 20 mlBianco vermouth 10 mlMaraschino liqueur 5 mlChilled water 5 mlAbsinthe 5 mlAbbott's bitters 2 dashesSaline solution 1 dash
Fine strain into the chilled glass
Garnish with a maraschino cherry

Tips

Stir over ice until well-chilled and diluted — the two vermouths and maraschino need real dilution to knit together rather than sit sweet.
Add the saline solution as directed rather than skipping it — it sharpens the other flavors without reading as salty.
Fine-strain into a pre-chilled coupe so the drink stays cold without added dilution from the glass itself.
Measure the absinthe carefully — even a small excess overwhelms the two gins and both vermouths.

History

This version takes its name from the drink's most detailed period source: Charles H. Baker Jr.'s The Gentleman's Companion, a 1939 travel-and-drinks book in which Baker set down three variations he had encountered on his travels rather than a single fixed formula. One he traced to Dirty Dick's in Nassau in 1937, another to the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay in 1931, sipped after a race meeting at the Western India Turf Club, and a third to the Havana Country Club in the winter of 1930, built on Old Tom gin in place of dry gin. Each combined gin, French vermouth, absinthe, maraschino liqueur, and bitters, stirred and strained, with Baker recording the exact company and circumstances in which he drank them.

Baker's recipes sit within the longer, looser lineage of the Turf Club, a gin-and-vermouth drink whose earliest printed formula appeared in 1884 in George Winter's How to Mix Drinks–Bar-Keeper's Handbook, calling for Old Tom gin, Italian vermouth, and bitters. Later nineteenth-century versions varied further, including one built on genever, before Harry Johnson's 1900 recipe fixed the combination of gin, dry vermouth, absinthe, maraschino, and orange bitters that Baker's later recipes echo. The name refers to the turf clubs of the era, gentlemen's establishments built around horse racing and betting.