Description

Of course almost everybody has heard of the famous Singapore Sling, invented at Raffles Hotel in Singapore. What they might not know, is that sometime during the 1930’s they stopped serving the drink, and when they decided to start making it again, they discovered they no longer had the original recipe. As the rumor goes, an old customer had a recipe written on the back of an old napkin, and they used that to bring back the drink.

Transcript

The Straight Sling quite plausibly a drink you might know by a different name. Welcome to the Cocktail Spirit, I'm your host Robert Hess. Chances are you all heard that drink called the Singapore Sling. As history goes, it was about 1912, it was invented down at Raffle’s hotel in Singapore. What a lot of people don’t know is that the recipe actually got forgotten. I'm assuming it’s because the drink wasn’t super popular back in the days of its origin and it’s just kind of got shoved to the side and the bartender who created it end up leaving. It wasn’t until later after customers are coming back and asking for this drink, the Singapore Sling they had on the previous visit, that Raffle start, oh my God, we forgot how to make this drink. So they were able to recreate the recipe for the Singapore Sling base upon, believe it or not, the scribblings at the back of a napkin from a previous customer who said the bartender told him what the recipe was. There are some people that believed, the current Singapore Sling recipe was not the original recipe. Some of those people think, the original Singapore Sling recipe is what is now called the Straight Sling. Far less popular than Singapore Sling, but it’s an excellent cocktail and it’s an example of what perhaps the Singapore Sling was originally. So let's make one. We're going to start off with some Plymouth gin. We're going to do 2 ounces of Plymouth gin. And we're going to do an ounce of lemon juice. Then we add a half ounce of dried cherry brandy. I'm going to be using Cherry Herring, which is an ingredient for the Singapore Sling as well. It’s a little bit on the sweet side, so you could use any cherry brandy you might have. But you want to try to get some actually in quality. Not some of the cheap artificial flavored type stuff you might find. And a half ounce of Benedictine. And then dash of both Angostura aromatic bitters and a dash of Angostura orange base. Now we have our ice. And we're going to take a Collin’s glass and fill it with ice. And strain our drink into that. And then top that off with soda water. And serve with a couple of straws. And there we have the Straight Sling.