Ingredients
- 2 1/4 ounces brandy -- brandy
- 3/4 ounce creme de menthe -- white creme de menthe
cocktail glass
Instructions:
Shake well with cracked ice -- and go easy on the crème de menthe -- then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. The Stinger is sometimes served with a pair of short straws. Don't tell anyone we said so, but the Stinger is almost as tasty if you make it with a good white rum, such as Brugal. You can call that a Picador, we suppose.
The Wondrich Take:
"Stingers, and keep them coming." --Cary Grant, as a navy pilot, in Kiss Them for Me. (Check out Jayne Mansfield in this one -- talk about stingers!)
In fact, Esquire's 1949 Handbook for Hosts identifies the Stinger as a favorite with flyboys back in the Big One. Chalk this up to one of two things: (1) They were a bunch of college boys who hadn't got used to the taste of real liquor; or (2) The mint oil it contains was widely supposed to work toward disguising the alcohol on one's breath. Or perhaps, as is so often the case when it comes to choosing one tipple over another, there's a social factor involved. The Stinger, you see, was a terribly upper-crust sort of drink, the kind of thing you'd order at the club after a hard day of doing nothing whilst in luxurious surroundings. The fighter-jockeys considered themselves the aristocracy of the armed forces, and what could be more natural than for them to drink accordingly? In any case, the Stinger's as quick and pleasant a way to fill up on the ol' ethylated spirit as any known. More important, if it's ordered correctly, only the most clueless bar-fumbler can screw it up.
Saving that happy thought, let's talk history. Of all the indispensable cocktails, the Stinger's origins are the most obscure. One way or another, over the course of time your martinis and Manhattans, Old-Fashioneds and Sazeracs, daiquiris and margaritas have all been fitted out with etiologies, a word which here means "a dubiously accurate story explaining a cocktail's origin." Not the Stinger -- its conception is tied to no bartender, no grand hotel, no long-dead barfly. Doubtless led astray by its absence in the most common pre-Prohibition drink guides, some folks have asserted that it was a child of the Dry Age, born of the need to disguise the taste of homemade hooch. Nope. Jerry Sullivan, writing after repeal, cites it as one of the most popular pre-Prohibition drinks, and indeed it's right there in Tom Bullock's 1917 Ideal Bartender. Beyond that, however, we know next to nothing. If it was known to the experts behind the bar at the Old Waldorf-Astoria, it didn't make it into their bar book.
But that's not the end of the story. A careful search of the professional literature presents us with a philosophical problem. Would that combination of brandy and crème de menthe we call a Stinger, by any other name, sting as sweetly? Like, for instance, if you call it a Judge, as William "The Only William" Schmidt did in 1891, or a Brant, as George J. Kappeler did four years later (although he added a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters and a twist of lemon peel). And what if you call it a Stinger all right, but use Amer Picon* instead of brandy? New York's Café des Beaux Arts (a "bar for women," as The New York Times noted) was doing that in 1913. All valid questions, but above our pay grade.
Whatever its origins, traditionally the Stinger was strictly an after-dinner drink. But then, sometime in the early 1920s, Reginald Vanderbilt (father of little Gloria) took to moistening the clay with them before his meals at New York's celeb-infested The Colony. In a lesser name, that would of course be considered vulgar. But if a Vanderbilt's doing it, it must be kosher. For that service, we thank him.
* Amer Picon is an orangish-flavored French bitter, formerly made at 80-proof and now much lower. (Amer Torani, from California, is a nice full-strength substitute if you can find it.)
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