Redeemed Leftovers: Peach-Rum Syrup

Hey—maybe not my most innovative, but it’s a small triumph when my leftovers don’t actually creep me out. One summer Sunday evening, I was trying to be seasonal and also not end dinner with a huge blob of fat for dessert. So I poached peaches. They were pretty cool, as that sort of thing goes. I added some gold Jamaica rum to the syrup—maybe a quarter to a half a cup. So at the end there was this slightly peach and rum flavored byproduct that was too good to discard. It was so subtle that a recipe didn’t immediately come to mind, but I figured I’d stick in anything that called for simple syrup. No longer would it be That Weird Thing I Made but an actual ingredient—one that plays well with brown booze. I’ll be poaching fruit for dessert again soon.



Savannah Sazerac

• 2 oz rye (Sazerac)
• 1/2 tsp leftover peach-rum syrup
• 1/4 tsp absinthe
• 6 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
• 2-3 drops Angostura bitters
• Lemon twist

Stir with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Express the lemon oil from the twist along the rim of the glass and over the drink, and drop it in or discard it.
SOURCE: COMPOSITE, ADAPTED BY ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE



Brugal Old Fashioned

• 2 oz Brugal Añejo rum
• 1 tsp leftover peach-rum syrup
• 1-2 dashes Angostura Bitters
• 1-2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
• Splash of water
• Strip of lime peel

The lime peel only works with a fairly fresh, perky lime and a sharp vegetable peeler. Take a good-sized strip of green off the outside of the lime and bruise it well with a muddler in a glass with the syrup. Add the bitters and a piece of ice or two. Add the spirits and the splash, and give it a stir.
SOURCE: COMPOSITE, ADAPTED BY ROWEN, FOGGED IN LOUNGE

I’d give you a recipe for poached peaches, but I don’t really remember exactly, and c’mon, it’s not brain surgery: peeled peach halves, sugar, water, rum at the end so you don’t cook it too much. Y’know—poached peaches.

Aquavit Old-Fashioned

I enjoy aquavit and like exploring its range. Tonight, the bottle I happen to have around the house is Linie from Norway. It travels by ship around the globe, past the Equator (the Linie) to Australia, and back to Norway. The flavor is soft, elegant and well-suited to shots (snaps). I’ve tried it in a few cocktails and find that its mildness is easily overpowered, but this Old-Fashioned lets the spirits come through.

2 oz Linie aquavit
1/2 tsp sugar, dissolved in a small splash of hot water
2 dashes Regans’ orange bitters
lemon peel

Muddle the sugar, water, lemon peel and bitters together. Add an ice cube or two and spirits.

That’s No Way to Make an Old-Fashioned

One afternoon between Christmas and New Year’s, I walked into a Financial District bar and ordered an Old-Fashioned, no fruit.

“An Old-Fashioned,” said the bartender. “That’s like a Margarita with bourbon?”

(Sigh.)

I talked him through the drink. He was game. Nice guy.

When I started drinking bourbon Old-Fashioneds with my friends in my 20s, I liked them, at least as much as any other mixed drink I had ordered, anyway, though some of the elements seemed to come together a little oddly. There was that mishmash of muddled orange and denatured cherry, and the grainy sugar crust on the bottom. And often there was so much soda that the drink seemed waterlogged.

I've since learned that what seemed weird there wasn’t really part of the drink in the beginning, and that the Old-Fashioned actually started out as a Margarita with bourbon. Kidding.

David Wondrich explains in his great book Imbibe! that to 19th-century Americans, the Old-Fashioned was a way of asking for the most basic sort of cocktail: spirits, bitters, maybe a citrus peel, a little sugar, a little water to melt the sugar but only that much. The Old-Fashioned customer liked booze and wanted to taste it. (Me too.)

The Old-Fashioned is a formula with variable ingredients: the base, bitters and citrus peel can change, but the drink is made the same way. In the case of all Old-Fashioneds, they're cocktails by the ancient definition, a bitters thing with no sour element. (Sorry, bourbon Margarita fans.) And for me, a citrus peel isn't essential, but you might as well have it. Old-Fashioneds still seem like themselves with a splash of soda water, but they should be kept boozy. They're not highballs. Technically, Wondrich tells us, a teaspoon of curacao would make it a Fancy Cocktail, though in place of the syrup and with no lemon or orange peel on hand, this seems close enough (old fashioned enough?)--especially after two or three of them.



Old-Fashioned Rye Whiskey Cocktail

2 oz rye (Rittenhouse 100 proof)
1 tsp simple syrup
2 dashes aromatic bitters (Fee Bros Whiskey Barrel Aged)
lemon peel

In a heavy-bottomed, low glass (an "Old-Fashioned glass"), bruise the lemon peel with a muddler in the bitters and syrup. Add a little ice, spirits, and a very small splash of water. Stir gently.