Ward Eight, Rye, Orange and Lemon from 1922
Reader ratingsRye whisky shaken hard with orange and lemon juice and a teaspoon of grenadine: the Ward Eight as a London bar book printed it in 1922, with its own story of where the name came from.
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink, about 3 fl oz
- Prep
- Total
Ward Eight with a light froth in a stemmed glass, beside half an orange.
The story behind the recipe
The Ward Eight is a whiskey sour with orange in it and a pink tint: rye shaken with orange juice, lemon juice and a teaspoon of grenadine. Robert Vermeire printed it in 1922 in Cocktails: How to Mix Them, a London bar book, and began with an order: “This cocktail must be well shaken.”
Vermeire’s Boston story
He placed the drink in Boston and explained the name in one line: “This cocktail originates from Boston (U.S.A.), a city divided into eight wards.” That is his explanation, and it doesn’t fit, since Boston had many more wards than eight. The livelier origin stories told today, about a Boston restaurant and an election, are not in our sources, so we leave them out. What the book does show is an American whiskey drink being poured in a London bar while the United States was dry, the trade told in Cocktails in 1920s London and Paris.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
Its parent is the Whiskey Sour of the 1880s, lemon, sugar and whiskey. Here orange juice takes half the citrus and grenadine replaces the sugar, so the drink is softer and lightly pink. Shake it hard, as Vermeire says, so it comes out cold with a thin froth.
Ward Eight Cocktail. This cocktail must be well shaken. It is composed of: 1 teaspoonful of Grenadine. ⅛ gill of Orange Juice. ⅛ gill of Lemon Juice. ¼ gill of Rye Whisky. This cocktail originates from Boston (U.S.A.), a city divided into eight wards.
Recipe makes: 1 drink, about 3 fl oz
Ingredients
For 1 drink, about 3 fl oz. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 1 drink, about 3 fl oz.
- Rye whiskey1 1/4 fl oz
- Fresh orange juice5/8 fl oz
- Fresh lemon juice5/8 fl oz
- Grenadine1 tsp
- Ice cubes1 cup
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1 1/4 fl oz rye whiskey
- 5/8 fl oz fresh orange juice
- 5/8 fl oz fresh lemon juice
- 1 tsp grenadine
- 1 cup ice cubes
Equipment
Cocktail shaker and strainer
Citrus juicer
Small stemmed cocktail glass
Instructions
Chill a small cocktail glass in the freezer or with ice water.
Put the ice cubes in a cocktail shaker and add the grenadine, fresh orange juice, fresh lemon juice and rye whiskey.
Close the shaker and shake hard for about 15 seconds, until it is very cold.
Empty the glass if it holds ice water, strain the drink into it and serve at once.
Nutrition
105calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink, about 3 fl oz
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for 90-proof rye whiskey, orange and lemon juice and grenadine, for one drink.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is one drink. Shake no more than two at a time.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Vermeire’s measures are fractions of a British gill, about 5 fl oz: a quarter gill of rye is about 1 1/4 fl oz and an eighth gill about 5/8 fl oz. The drink comes to about 17% ABV after shaking. He asks for rye; bourbon makes a rounder, sweeter drink, our option.
Vermeire’s alcohol-free chapter has the same orange and lemon in the Florida Cocktail, shaken with a few dashes of bitters.
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
Robert Vermeire, Cocktails: How to Mix Them (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1922; eleventh printing), p. 48, “Ward Eight Cocktail”
See the original pages (scan at Internet Archive) (opens in a new tab)
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Cocktails & Mixed Drinks
- Era
- Jazz Age
- Source decade
- 1920s
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- 1920s party