“I don’t know what Harry Craddock’s personality was like, I wish I knew him. The Corpse Reviver #1 also comes with a note by Craddock: “To be taken before 11 a.m., or whenever steam and energy are needed.” “I think that’s part humor, part truth for that era,” says Lucinda Sterling, bartender and managing partner at Middle Branch and Seaborne. “I have had a number 1 also, but believe that number 2 fits the taste profile best for an uplifting style of cocktail.” McGurk theorizes that the Corpse Reviver #2’s resurgence is at least party due to Cocchi Americano’s recent return to the market.Īlthough the Savoy will gladly make you a Corpse Reviver #1, McGurk shares the majority preference for the #2. “Sometimes they even have notes in the book from a visit many years before.” His note after the Corpse Reviver #2 recipe reveals a bit of his humor: “Four of these taken in quick succession will unrevive the corpse again.”ĭeclan McGurk, the current American Bar manager at the Savoy, says that patrons often bring in their own copies of Craddock’s book. “The Savoy Cocktail Book” is his most enduring legacy, a compilation of almost 40 years of cocktail recipes, including many of his own devising. He started out working at the Dispense Bar, but was head barman at the American Bar by 1925. Originally from America, he came to the Savoy in 1920, shortly after Prohibition began. In 1930, Harry Craddock came on the scene with the Corpse Revivers #1 and #2. They suggest filling a wineglass half with brandy, half with Maraschino and adding two dashes of Boker’s bitters. There are mentions of layered Corpse Reviver drinks (including such ingredients as creme de noyau, maraschino, and yellow chartreuse) said to be on Parisian menus by 1863, but the first Corpse Reviver recipe appears to be from “ The Gentleman’s Table Guide” by E. Usage can be seen as early as 1861 in London’s Punch magazine. In 1889, a charming slang dictionary describes a “Corpse-reviver” as “a dram of spirits” with an example of usage from The Sporting Times: “There was a general rush for wet towels and corpse-revivers.” The term covered a very diverse group of mixed drinks, mostly intended to be hair of the dog remedies. 2, while others reach for other quinquinas (Tempus Fugit’s Kina L’Aero D’or is often cited as a close approximation of the original.) Authenticity should be applauded, but it might also be noted that few of those bars keep the drink’s preferred categorization as hair of the dog and serve the drink before noon.When you hear “Corpse Reviver,” your mind likely travels to the Corpse Reviver #2 from Harry Craddock’s “The Savoy Cocktail Book.” But if you were speaking colloquially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, asking for a corpse reviver was equivalent to telling your friends you’d spent the previous evening out on the town. Many bars rely instead on Cocchi Americano to recreate the Corpse Reviver No. And while Lillet exists now as Lillet Blanc, a lighter, sweeter aperitif, the original stuff has gone the way of the dodo. The latter was a quinquina aperitif-an herbal aromatized wine that relied heavily on chinchona bark, the stuff that gives traditional tonic water its bite. The #2 of which he speaks adds a splash of absinthe to equal parts gin, orange liqueur, lemon juice, and Kina Lillet. In Harry Craddock’s The Savoy Cocktail Book, which compiled well-loved recipes from The American Bar at London’s Savoy Hotel, the famous barkeep writes of the first Corpse Reviver: “To be taken before 11 a.m., or whenever steam and energy are needed.” While that drink is not the most famous of its morning cocktail family, it sets the groundwork for the group, which Craddock joyfully notes when he adds the second, more popular drink: “Four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.” The equal-parts cocktail has a name that sounds vital, but of an older world, where one might casually partake of a morning mixed drink to shake off the cobwebs of sleep (or of last night’s excess). The Corpse Reviver #2 has survived nearly a hundred years in the sometimes fickle world of cocktails.
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