Bee's Knees
50 ml Gin, 20 ml Lemon juice, 20 ml Honey syrup, 1 Lemon twist
Photo: Aviation Cocktail · All credits
Ingredients
- 45 ml Jigger One small side (25 ml) of a standard jigger, plus a tablespoon and a teaspoon. Gin
- 15 ml Spoons A tablespoon. Maraschino liqueur
- 15 ml Spoons A tablespoon. Lemon juice
- 7.5 ml Spoons One and a half teaspoons. Crème de violette - A barspoon will do if you only want a hint of colour (optional)
- 1 cherry Maraschino cherry (optional)
Measured in Millilitres (UK). Sign in to read these in American measures. Print a kitchen card at this size.
What the jigger, the spoons and the jug hold, in millilitres and in fluid ounces, is on the measures reference.
Quick version
- Shake everything hard with ice and strain into a chilled coupe.
Method
- Chill a coupe while you get the shaker out.
- Add the gin, maraschino, lemon juice and crème de violette to a shaker with plenty of ice.
- Shake hard for 12 seconds - this one wants a good chill and a little dilution.
- Double strain into the coupe and drop in a cherry.
Serve it
Aviation
Hugo Ensslin put this on the menu of the Hotel Wallick in New York around 1916, back when air travel was a novelty and a drink named after it must have felt impossibly modern. It then vanished for the best part of a century, mostly because nobody could buy crème de violette, and came back the moment the liqueur did.
Getting it right
The violet is the whole argument and the whole risk. Without it you have a perfectly nice gin sour; with too much you have a glass of perfume, so start with a barspoon and add a little more next time if you missed the flowers. If your bottle has gone a muddy brown, that is the colouring fading rather than the flavour - use it anyway.
Tasting notes
Cherry and almond from the maraschino, juniper underneath, and lemon holding it all upright. It is a soft, pale, grown-up sort of drink - the one to make when somebody says they do not really like gin.
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