Klondike Cocktail: Tom Gin and Bénédictine from 1903
Reader ratingsOld Tom gin stirred over ice with orange bitters, a dash of Bénédictine and a little brandy, finished with lemon peel: the Klondike Cocktail of a 1903 bar book, for miners home rich.
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink, about 2 3/4 fl oz
- Prep
- Total
The Klondike Cocktail with a lemon twist on a dark bar, beside a mixing glass of ice and a few gold nuggets.
The story behind the recipe
The Klondike Cocktail is a glass of sweetened gin with a few drops of herbs, orange and brandy, printed in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1903. Tim Daly’s Daly’s Bartenders’ Encyclopedia gives it as a wine glass of Tom gin stirred over fine ice with two dashes of orange bitters and a dash of Bénédictine, then a small dash of eau de vie and a squeeze of lemon. Daly called it “a nugget” sought by miners and prospectors home from the gold fields “who have struck it rich.”
What the rich ones had missed
Daly’s note goes on to say they had missed the luxuries of the north, and the miners who went to the Klondike in 1897 and 1898 had reason to. Tappan Adney, who wintered in Dawson for Harper’s Weekly, found the bar whiskey “apt to be diluted to the last degree” and champagne at $40 a quart, about $1,550 today by US consumer prices. When the whiskey ran out, the miners distilled their own “hootch” from sourdough and sugar.
Daly puts the gold fields in Alaska. The Klondike is in Canada’s Yukon, though most of the stampede went in through the Alaska ports of Skagway and Dyea. Whether any miner home from Dawson ever asked for this drink by name, the book does not say; the “nugget” is Daly’s claim.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
Daly’s wine glass, as bar books of the time used it, is taken here as 2 fl oz. Tom gin, the lightly sweetened Old Tom style, is what he names, and his eau de vie is read as brandy. Stirred with ice it comes to about 2 3/4 fl oz at roughly 30% ABV, a little over one US standard drink. The arithmetic: 2 fl oz of 40% gin holds 0.8 fl oz of alcohol, the brandy and Bénédictine add about 0.05 fl oz between them, and stirring adds about 2/3 fl oz of water. Daly gives no tasting note. From what goes in, it is a pale, clear gin drink, faintly sweet, with orange and herbs at the edges.
For a cup the stampeders actually drank, at 75 cents in Dawson (about $29 today), try the breakfast cocoa of 1886, alcohol-free. The prices, the dance halls and the hootch are in Hootch, 50-Cent Coffee and $40 Champagne: Drinking in the Klondike.
Recipe makes: 1 drink, about 2 3/4 fl oz
Ingredients
For 1 drink, about 2 3/4 fl oz. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 1 drink, about 2 3/4 fl oz.
- Old Tom gin2 fl oz
- Bénédictine1/4 tsp
- Orange bitters2 dashes
- Brandy1/2 tsp
- Strip lemon peel1
- Ice cubes
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 2 fl oz Old Tom gin
- 1/4 tsp Bénédictine
- 2 dashes orange bitters
- 1/2 tsp brandy
- 1 strip lemon peel
- ice cubes
Equipment
Mixing glass
Bar spoon
Strainer
Cocktail glass
Instructions
Chill a cocktail glass in the freezer or with ice water.
Pour the Old Tom gin, Bénédictine, orange bitters and brandy into a mixing glass and fill it two-thirds with ice cubes.
Stir steadily for about 20 seconds, until the mixing glass is very cold to the touch.
Strain into the chilled glass, twist the lemon peel over the drink and drop it in.
Nutrition
150calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink, about 2 3/4 fl oz
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for 80-proof gin and brandy, plus about 2 g of sugar from the Old Tom gin and Bénédictine.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Stir no more than two drinks at a time; keep the Bénédictine and brandy to a dash each.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Daly’s recipe is paraphrased here, not reprinted. He builds the drink in a mixing glass full of fine ice and squeezes “a piece of lemon into the glass” at the end. We read that as lemon peel, as in the Tom gin cocktails of the same years, and we strain it off the ice; Daly does not say.
A dash of Bénédictine is a few drops; 1/4 teaspoon is our measure. Use 1/2 teaspoon of brandy for his small dash of eau de vie, or leave it out.
With London dry gin in place of Old Tom, the drink is drier. Add 1/4 teaspoon of simple syrup to bring it nearer the sweetened gin Daly named.
For another Tom gin drink of the same years, the oldest dry Martini we found is from 1904.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
Tim Daly, Daly’s Bartenders’ Encyclopedia (Worcester, Mass.: T. Daly, 1903), p. 90
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Cocktails & Mixed Drinks
- Region
- American
- Source decade
- 1900s
- Base
- Gin
- Difficulty
- Easy