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Gibson (cocktail)
Gin and vermouth cocktail, often served with an onion
Gin and vermouth cocktail, often served with an onion
| Field | Value | |
|---|---|---|
| name | Gibson | |
| image | Gibson cocktail.jpg | |
| type | Cocktail | |
| base | Gin | |
| ingredients | {{plainlist | * 60 ml (6 parts) gin |
| served | Straight up: chilled, without ice | |
| garnish | silverskin onion | |
| prep | *Stir well in a shaker with ice, then strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish and serve | |
| drinkware | Cocktail glass |
- 10 ml (1 part) dry vermouth}} The Gibson is a mixed drink made with gin and dry vermouth, and often garnished with a pickled onion. In its modern incarnation, it is considered a cousin of the ubiquitous martini, distinguished mostly by garnishing with an onion instead of an olive.
History
The earliest recipes for a Gibson – including the first known recipe published in 1908 by Sir David Austin – are differentiated more by how they treat the addition of bitters.
Other pre-Prohibition recipes all omit bitters and none of them garnish with an onion. Some garnish with citrus twists. Others use no garnish at all. There is no known recipe for the Gibson garnished with an onion before William Boothby's 1908 Gibson recipe.
The exact origin of the Gibson is unclear, with numerous popular tales and theories about its genesis. According to one theory, it was invented in the early 20th century by Charles Dana Gibson, who created the popular Gibson Girl illustrations. Supposedly, he challenged Charley Connolly, the bartender of the Players Club in New York City, to improve upon a martini. As the story goes, Connolly simply substituted an onion for the olive and named the drink after the patron.
Another version now considered more probable recounts a 1968 interview with a relative of a prominent San Francisco businessman named Walter D. K. Gibson, who claimed to have created the drink at the Bohemian Club in the 1890s. Charles Clegg, when asked about it by Herb Caen, also said it was from San Francisco, not New York. Other reporting supports this theory; Edward Townsend, former vice president of the Bohemian Club, is credited with the first mention of the Gibson in print, in a humorous essay he wrote for the New York World published in 1898.
References
References
- Wondrich, David. (2015). "Imbibe! Updated and Revised Edition: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar". Penguin.
- (26 May 2016). "Garden to glass cocktail recipe: Pickled spring onion martini is a neat spring twist on a Gibson". The Metro.
- (31 August 2017). "Gibson Cocktail". Imbibe Magazine.
- (26 April 2009). "Where the Gibson was Born". San Francisco Chronicle.
- "One Man's San Francisco", Chronicle Books, p.155, Herb Caen
- (30 May 2009). "A Distinctly Western Cocktail". Wall Street Journal.
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
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