Old Fashioned

How to Make Old Fashioned

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1. Put the sugar syrup and both bitters into a mixing glass. If using a sugar cube, saturate it with the bitters and crush it with a muddler first, then add a teaspoon of water.

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2. Add the whiskey and stir briefly to combine.

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3. Fill the mixing glass two-thirds with cubed ice.

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4. Stir steadily with a bar spoon for 30 seconds — long enough for the outside of the glass to frost. You are chilling and diluting at the same time and both matter.

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5. Put one large ice cube into a chilled rocks glass and strain the drink over it.

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6. Hold the orange peel skin side down a few centimetres above the surface and squeeze it sharply so the oils spray across the drink. You should see the mist.

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7. Rub the peel around the rim, drop it in, and add a cherry if you like.

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Worth Getting Right

• Rich syrup — two parts sugar to one of water — sweetens without watering the drink down.
• One large cube in the glass. Small cubes melt fast and the last third of the drink is water.
• No muddled orange slice. That is a different, sweeter drink and it belongs to the 1970s.

Pairs Well With

A quiet hour · Salted almonds · A steak

Leftovers and Storage

Made to order. A batch of the whiskey, syrup and bitters keeps indefinitely in a sealed bottle — stir it with ice when you pour.

Old Fashioned Nutrition

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.