Elements: Raspberry Cocktails

We see much of history through sepia-toned shades, antiquity’s appearance tinged with gold and amber. Cocktail history, however, sometimes takes a different hue—such as the accents of pink and crimson that accompany drinking culture’s long relationship with the rich flavor of raspberries.

Along with other cocktail produce staples like citrus, pineapple, and fresh mint, raspberries populated a surprisingly large number of cocktail recipes starting in the mid-19th century. Fresh raspberries were regularly deployed as garnish atop cobblers and punches, and when translated into syrup form, the berries contributed both their rubicund tinge and their fragrant, sweet-tart character.

The fruit found its way into recipes for the Brandy Punch, the Knickerbocker, and the National Guard 7th Regiment Punch, all included in Jerry Thomas’ seminal 1862 The Bar-Tender’s Guide. Subsequent decades saw the raspberry’s continued popularity as a character actor in cocktail recipes, accompanying brandy and rye whiskey in New Orleans’ own Roffignac cocktail; genever and lemon juice in the Gin Fix; and even playing an equal part alongside ingredients like maraschino liqueur and yellow Chartreuse in that classic cocktail ensemble production, the Pousse Café, as rendered by Harry Johnson in 1882.

Raspberry syrup’s utility as a cocktail coloring gradually gave way to pomegranate-based grenadine, but the fruit’s bright, rich flavor remained significant as a cocktail mainstay well into the 20th century. While proving its utility in dark-spirit drinks like the Quaker’s Cocktail (with brandy and aged rum) and the Cora Middleton (with Jamaican rum and lemon), raspberry found its spirituous life partner in gin—the Clover Club, the Floradora, and the Leave It to Me all paired the ingredients together with memorable results.

The quality of commercially made syrups (such as Small Hand Foods’ raspberry gum syrup) has improved markedly in recent years, but during peak berry season, incorporating fresh raspberries into cocktails is a simple project at home. Tossing a few berries into a shaker along with simple syrup is an easy on-the-fly technique, or spend a few minutes mixing up a basic homemade syrup to have at the ready—perfect for pitching into cocktails or lemonade, and letting the berry’s summery flavor brighten everything it touches.