A tart, rosy whiskey sour built on an equal-parts spine of spicy rye and dry vermouth, the vermouth drying and lengthening the whiskey while lemon brightens it and grenadine lends both sweetness and its blush of colour. Shaken hard and served up ice-cold in a coupe, it finishes on a sharpened edge from a dash of orange bitters and the bright oil of an expressed lemon peel.
Garnish: Lemon Peel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Add the rye whiskey, dry vermouth, lemon juice, grenadine, and orange bitters to a cocktail shaker.
shake
Fill with ice and shake well until thoroughly chilled.
strain
Fine-strain into a chilled coupe glass, served up.
express
Express a lemon twist over the surface to perfume the drink.
garnish
Drop the lemon twist in as garnish.
The most repeated story credits a bartender remembered only as Jock at Harry's New York Bar in Paris, and Harry MacElhone carried the recipe into print in his "ABC of Mixing Cocktails." The claim has a rival — a Chicago Tribune report from January 1924 tied a Scofflaw to Maxim's, another Paris bar, reportedly mixed two days before Harry's version and in a whiskey-heavier three-to-two ratio. The name borrowed a fresh coinage — "scofflaw," the winner of a 1923 contest held by Delcevare King to find a word for the drinker who defied Prohibition.