Brisk and dry, it drinks like a sharper, more aromatic cousin of the Whiskey Sour: rye's grain-forward spine up front, fresh lemon cutting through, and only a touch of plain syrup to soften the edges. Two dashes of orange bitters lay a faint citrus-peel lift over the top, and served up and well chilled in a coupe it finishes clean and bracing.
Garnish: Lemon Peel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine rye whiskey, lemon juice, simple syrup, and orange bitters in a shaker with ice.
shake
Shake well until chilled.
strain
Fine-strain into a chilled coupe, served up.
garnish
Optionally express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
Cincinnati bartender Phil Gross is the drink's credited creator — his name sits beside the recipe in its earliest known printing, Harry McElhone's Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails of 1922, which called for rye. The Savoy Cocktail Book carried it to a much wider audience in 1930, specifying Canadian Club and letting the drinker choose between lime and lemon. Modern bartenders have largely settled on rye and lemon, and the drink is distinct from an unrelated rum-based Commodore sweetened with grenadine — as Embury pointed out in 1948, the whiskey version relies on orange bitters where that one uses grenadine.