The Screwdriver as Newsweek Reported It (1944)
Reader ratingsHalf orange juice and half vodka over ice: the Screwdriver as Newsweek reported it from wartime Ankara in 1944, five years before Time called it the newest American mix.
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink
- Prep
- Total
A 1944 Screwdriver over ice in a plain tumbler on a walnut bar, with a jug of orange juice and a halved orange.
The story behind the recipe
A Newsweek correspondent found the Screwdriver in wartime Ankara. In February 1944 the magazine described it from neutral Turkey as “a half-orange-juice and half-vodka drink popularized by interned American aviators,” and gave its price there as a dollar, about $18 in today’s money, by US consumer prices. That is the earliest printed mention we know of: an American drink, first reported abroad, in equal measures.
Airmen in Ankara
The report came from Kenneth Crawford, in a Newsweek piece headed “Turkey and the War: Neutrality Pays Big Dividends.” Turkey was not fighting, and American airmen who came down on its soil were interned there. Five years later the drink was still news from Turkey. In October 1949 Time described a Turkish hotel bar where Turkish intelligence agents rubbed shoulders with American engineers and Balkan refugees, all drinking the newest American mix of vodka and orange juice, which went by the name of screwdriver.
Neither magazine says where the name came from, and no source of the time explains it. American oil workers stirring their drinks with a screwdriver make a neat explanation, but that telling turns up only later; the earliest reports mention airmen and engineers, never a tool.
Equal parts of spirit and orange juice had been tried before. Harry MacElhone’s Monkey Gland of 1923 is gin and orange juice half and half, colored with grenadine.
Read more about this recipe
Even measures, fresh juice
This recipe is the 1944 drink in Newsweek’s even measures. Neither report gives a glass or says whether it had ice. Time sets its drinkers in the dim bar of the Park Hotel, which tells us nothing about the glass, so a plain tumbler over ice is what we use. At 2 fl oz each it comes to about 17% ABV, against about 12% for today’s longer glass, which takes twice as much juice as vodka.
Squeeze the orange fresh, since the juice is half the glass; one juicy orange usually gives enough. It was the last of the classics reported in the press before any bar book printed it, as The Bartenders Who Wrote Down the Classic Cocktails tells.
Recipe makes: 1 drink
Ingredients
For 1 drink. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 1 drink.
- Vodka2 fl oz
- Fresh orange juice2 fl oz
- Ice cubes
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 2 fl oz vodka
- 2 fl oz fresh orange juice
- ice cubes
Equipment
Citrus juicer
Tumbler
Bar spoon
Instructions
Squeeze the fresh orange juice and strain out the seeds.
Fill a tumbler with ice cubes and pour in the vodka, then the orange juice.
Stir with a bar spoon until the outside of the glass feels cold.
Nutrition
155calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for 80-proof vodka (64 calories per fl oz) and raw orange juice.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
Scale by whole drinks; build each glass separately.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
For today’s Screwdriver, a modern recipe: pour 1 1/2 fl oz vodka over ice in a highball glass and top with 3 fl oz orange juice. It comes to about 12% ABV.
Without the vodka, a glass of fresh orange juice over ice is the plain answer; for something lighter and sweeter, the period Fresh Orangeade stretches the juice with water and a little sugar.
Without the vodka, the nearest drink on our pages is Fresh Orangeade, fresh orange juice with a peel syrup and cold water.
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
Kenneth Crawford, “Turkey and the War: Neutrality Pays Big Dividends”, Newsweek, February 21, 1944, vol. 23, no. 8, p. 36; “Turkey: Wild West of the Middle East”, Time, October 24, 1949
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Cocktails & Mixed Drinks
- Region
- American
- Source decade
- 1940s
- Difficulty
- Easy