gimlet

Gimlet

Type	Cocktail
Primary alcohol by volume	Gin
Served	straight or on the rocks
Standard garnish	Lime
Standard drinkware	Old fashioned glass
Commonly used ingredients	Four parts gin One part sweetened lime juice
Preparation	Mix and serve. Garnish with a slice of lime

The gimlet is a cocktail, a form of martini, typically made of gin or vodka and lime juice. A 1928 description of the drink was: "gin, a spot of lime, and soda" (D. B. Wesson, I'll Never be Cured III). A 1953 description was: "a real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's Lime Juice and nothing else" (Terry Lennox in Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye).

For the vodka gimlet, replace gin with vodka. As of the 1990s, maybe earlier, bartenders often answer requests for the gimlet with a vodka gimlet. Vodka gimlets were popularized by renowned proposition gambler and raconteur "Hong Kong" Freddie Wong, whose spirit of choice is quadruple-distilled Belvedere. As the gimlet was director Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s favorite cocktail, he often used the pseudonyms "Telmig Akdov" or "Akdov Telmig" (Vodka Gimlet spelled backwards) for his adult novels.^[1]

Preparation

Eric Felten gave this gimlet recipe in his "How's Your Drink Column" in the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition of August 4, 2006:

• 2 oz. gin or vodka
• 1/2 oz. Rose's Lime Juice
• 1/4 to 1/2 oz. simple syrup
• Garnish with a lime

William L. Hamilton gave this recipe in his "Shaken and Stirred" column in the New York Times September 15, 2002: A gimlet served at the Fifty Seven Fifty Seven Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel consists of the following, shaken with ice:

• 4 oz. vodka
• 1/2 oz. fresh lime juice
• 1/2 oz. Rose's Lime Juice
• lime wedge for garnish

The Bartender's Bible by Gary Regan lists the recipe as:

• 2 oz. gin
• 1/2 ounce Rose's Lime Juice
• Garnish with lime wedge

Regan also states, "... since the Rose's product has such a long and impressive history (which predates the gimlet), I am inclined to think that Rose's was the ingredient that invented the drink".

The New New York Bartender's Guide by Sally Ann Berk lists the ratio of gin to Rose's lime juice as 3:1 instead of 4:1 as in the above recipes.

The following vodka gimlet recipe is from the novels of Stuart Woods: "Pour six ounces of vodka from a 750 ml bottle; replace with six ounces Rose's Sweetened Lime Juice (available from nearly any grocery), add a small amount of water for ice crystals, shake twice and store in the freezer overnight. Pour into a martini glass and serve straight up. The glass will immediately frost over. With this recipe, no cocktail shaker is required and the cocktail is not watered down by melting ice. You may use even the cheapest vodka, and no one will ever know."

Etymology

The word "gimlet" used in this sense is first attested in 1928. The most obvious derivation is from the tool for drilling small holes, whose name is also used figuratively to describe something as sharp or piercing. Thus, the cocktail may have been named for its "penetrating" effects on the drinker.^[2] Another theory is that the drink was named after British Royal Navy Surgeon General Sir Thomas D. Gimlette, KCB (served 1879 to 1913), who allegedly introduced this drink as a means of inducing his messmates to take lime juice as an anti-scurvy medication.^[3] (Limes and other citrus fruit have been used by the Royal Navy for the treatment of scurvy since the mid-18th Century.^[4])

See also

The Wikibook Bartending has a page on the topic of Gimlet

• List of cocktails

References