Spirit-forward and bracing, it drinks like a Whiskey Sour with Bénédictine where the syrup would go, the rye's spice carrying a honeyed cloister of herbs through every sip. Lemon keeps the snap clean and bright, and a twist of peel over the chilled coupe lifts the aroma so the liqueur's sweetness never settles heavy.
Garnish: Lemon Peel
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine rye whiskey, Bénédictine, and lemon juice in a shaker.
shake
Add ice and shake well until chilled, about 10 seconds.
strain
Fine-strain into a chilled coupe.
garnish
Express a lemon twist over the surface and drop it in.
No one is credited with inventing the Frisco: it turned up in bar guides of the 1930s, with William "Cocktail Bill" Boothby's 1934 World Drinks and How to Mix Them among the earliest books to print it, and its name is a nod to San Francisco. In those early pages it was almost neat — rye seasoned with Bénédictine and finished with a twist — and it surfaced again in S.S. Field's The American Drink Book in 1953. A lemon-sharpened sour version was on record by the time of Stanley M. Jones's 1977 guide, and that citrus form has since displaced the sourless original behind most bars, with some London bartenders of the 1990s going further and shaking in egg white.