Singapore Sling

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Singapore Sling

Singapore Sling is a fruity-aromatic cocktail made from gin , cherry liqueur , Bénédictine and other ingredients. Despite the name, the version common today is strictly speaking not a sling , but rather a punch . The long drink serves as the signature drink (flagship) of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore . Its forerunner or the original version of a Singapore Sling is known today as the Straits Sling .

history

The slings are a very old group of mixed drinks and originally - according to a definition from 1675 - consisted of a spirit , sugar and water, and optionally some nutmeg . Accordingly, in 1806 the then still new word “ cocktail ” was defined as “bittered sling”, ie as a sling spiced with cocktail bitters . There were also slings with soda water , lemon wedges, lemon peel or lemon juice, but none that contained other fruits or fruit juices.

A Singapore Sling as served in the Raffles Hotel .

Around 1900, slings were mixed with gin and cherry brandy in Singapore , as the cocktail historian David Wondrich found out in 2011 based on old newspaper reports. At that time Singapore was a British crown colony and part of the Straits Settlements . The name Straits Sling comes from this contemporary name for the city . The Singapore or Straits Slings of the time were sometimes considered to be crude, as an article in the Singapore Weekly of 1913 quoted by Wondrich suggests, according to which they were not served at the bar of the local Singapore Cricket Club unless you ordered according to individual ingredients: gin , Cherry brandy, lime juice and Bénédictine as well as ice and water. A little later, around 1915, the sling that the hotel sees as the original form of the Singapore Sling is said to have been created at the Long Bar of the Raffles Hotel . It is attributed to the bartender Ngiam Tong Boon, but the recipe has not been passed down. In terms of taste, it was likely to have been a more or less typical Straits Sling of that time, i.e. it was clearly different from the Singapore Sling served today .

In the specialist literature, a Straits Sling was first mentioned in 1922, consisting of gin, cherry brandy, Bénédictine, lemon juice, orange and Angostura bitter and soda water . The name Singapore Sling was first used by Harry Craddock in his influential Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930. It consists of gin, cherry brandy and lemon juice and is topped up with soda water. Directly below is the recipe for a Straits Sling for six people, which contains the same ingredients, but is additionally refined with Bénédictine and cocktail bitters .

The recipe for the fruity Singapore Sling with pineapple juice, grenadine and orange liqueur, which is served today at the Raffles Hotel, was not recorded until 1936 - at a time when Tiki cocktails with rum and juices were becoming fashionable in the restaurants of Trader Vic and Don the Beachcomber .

preparation

Singapore Sling with typical ingredients.

For a Singapore Sling according to today's Raffles recipe, 3  cl gin, 1.5 cl cherry liqueur (in Raffles: Cherry Brandy ), 1 ½  BL Triple Sec (orange liqueur, in Raffles: Cointreau ), 1 ½ BL Bénédictine , 1 cl Grenadine or pomegranate syrup, 1.5 cl lime juice , 1  Dash (splashes) Angostura and 12 cl pineapple juice in cocktail shaker shaken on ice and in a with ice cubes filled guests glass strained . This version is also - with an identical recipe - one of the Official Cocktails of the International Bartenders Association and is listed in the Contemporary Classics group (for example: "contemporary classics"). There are also numerous simplifications with fewer ingredients and a large number of variants with different ingredients and mixing ratios.

A Straits Sling does without fruit juice, grenadine and orange liqueur, but instead contains soda water and is made from, for example, 4 cl gin, 2 cl lemon juice, 1 cl cherry brandy and Bénédictine each and 1–2 Dashes orange and Angostura bitters. The ingredients are shaken on ice, strained onto fresh ice in a long drink glass and topped up with about 4 cl of soda water.

Cherry liqueur, cherry brandy and cherry heering

Many recipes for Singapore Sling call for cherry brandy , and sometimes also cherry heering . Cherry brandy is a generic name for a specific type of cherry liqueur. Originally, its alcoholic base had to consist at least partially of brandy or a cherry distillate ( kirsch ). This is not the case with the traditional Danish brand Cherry Heering . Today, however, other cherry liqueurs made from neutral alcohol are also allowed to carry the sales name Cherry Brandy in the EU . Despite the differences, the terms cherry brandy and cherry liqueur have been and are used synonymously, especially in the Anglo-Saxon region. Cherry Heering is also often cited as a recommended cherry brandy. Cherry brandy cherry liqueurs are produced by numerous liqueur manufacturers today.

literature

  • Helmut Adam, Jens Hasenbein, Bastian Heuser: Cocktailian. The manual of the bar. Tre Torri, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-941641-41-9 , p. 348 f.
  • Ted Haigh: The Genealogy and Mythology of the Singapore Sling. In: Jared Brown (Ed.): Mixologist. The Journal of the American Cocktail. Mixellany (Jared Brown), New York 2005, ISBN 0-9760937-0-7 , pp. 73-82.
  • Andrew F. Smith: The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink . Oxford University Press 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-530796-2 , p. 567 ( excerpt (Google) )

Web links

Wikibooks: Recipe for the Singapore Sling  - Learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c In this article, cherry liqueur is used as a generic term and as a translation of Engl. cherry liqueur used. If Cherry Brandy appears in the original source or if the Cherry Heering brand is mentioned , the respective term is retained. For more information, see section Cherry Liqueur, Cherry Brandy and Cherry Heering .
  2. ^ Cocktailian, p. 349.
  3. ^ Edward R. Emerson: Beverages Past & Present . PP Putnam's Sons, New York 1908, quoted from: Ted Haigh, p. 78.
  4. ↑ Harry Croswell, editor of The Balance, and Columbian Repository (Hudson, New York), replied to a letter to the editor in the May 13, 1806 issue: “ Cock tail, then, is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind , sugar, water, and bitters - it is vulgarly called a bittered sling […] ”. See Anistatia Miller, Jared Brown: Spirituous Journey. A History of Drink. Book one: From the Birth of Spirits to the Birth of the Cocktail . Mixellany, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-9760937-9-4 , p. 191 ff.
  5. ↑ Ted Haigh, p. 81; Cocktailian, p. 349.
  6. ^ Robert Vermeire: Cocktails and How to Mix them. Jenkins, 1922; quoted from: Ted Haigh, p. 79.
  7. ↑ Harry Craddock: The Savoy Cocktail Book . Reprint of the original 1930 edition: Pavillon Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-1-86205-296-3 , p. 190.
  8. ↑ a b c In the recipes cited here and in other English-language recipes for the Singapore Sling, it remains unclear whether lime juice means freshly squeezed lime juice or a (significantly sweeter) Lime Juice Cordial , as the latter, as in the widespread Rose's Lime Juice brand, is often meant also abbreviated as lime juice is written.
  9. ↑ Robert Hess: Singapore Sling (in English), with an illustration of a recipe card from the Raffles Hotel, accessed on February 21, 2012.
  10. ↑ IBA Official Cocktails - Contemporary Classics. In: iba-world.com. Retrieved April 14, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Robert Hess, Anistatia Miller (ed.): The Museum of the American Cocktail Pocket Recipe Guide. Mixellany, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-9760937-3-2 , p. 118. [Note: The quantities are given in US customary fluid ounces and have been simplified in the text with 1 oz. = 2 cl, instead of 1 oz. = 2.8413 ... cl converted.]
  12. ↑ Erich Kolb (Ed.): Spirituosen-Technologie , 6th edition, Behr Verlag, 2002, ISBN 978-3-86022-997-2 , p. 355 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  13. ^ Ned Halley: Dictionary of Drink . Wordsworth Editions, Ware (Hertfordshire, UK) 1996, ISBN 978-1-84022-302-6 , p. 137 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  14. ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 110/2008 of January 15, 2008 . Annex II No. 32 d.