What is a Cocktail?
Bab Louie & Co. describes the definition of what is a cocktail and the history of the cocktail. You should know about this. The cocktail is a style of mixed drink. The cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink, which is either a combination of spirits, or one or more spirits mixed with other ingredients Like fruit juice, flavored syrup, or cream. There are various types of cocktails, based on the number and kind of ingredients added. The official definition of a "cocktail," according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is "an iced drink of wine or distilled liquor mixed with flavoring ingredients." While that's a pretty broad definition, it reflects the modern practice of referring to almost any mixed drink as a cocktail.
History of the Cocktail
The first known guide to cocktail making was published in 1862 by well-known American bartender Jerry Thomas. Thomas owned and operated salons across New York City in the 1800s and is often considered the father of American mixology.
What is a Cocktail?
Cocktails are traditionally thought of as an American innovation, but they were actually a minimum partly inspired by British punches big bowls of spirits mixed with fruit crush, spices, and other flavors, consumed in punch houses within the 18th century. The term cocktail was even first seen in a British newspaper printed in March of 1798. But the term wasn't really defined as we all know it until 1806, when The Balance and Columbian Repository of Hudson, New York, pinned the cocktail right down to what we follow today: “ an interesting liquor composed of any quite sugar, water, and bitters, vulgarly called a bittered sling.”
The first published definition of what is a cocktail appeared in an editorial response in The Balance and Columbian Repository of 1806. It read: "Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters ." That's the accepted definition of ingredients used today when referring to the "ideal" cocktail.
People are mixing drinks for hundreds of years, often to form an ingredient more palatable or to make medicinal elixirs. It wasn't until the 17th and 18th centuries that the precursors of the cocktail (e.g., slings fizzes toddies, and juleps ) became popular enough to be recorded within the history books. Though it's unclear where, who, and what went into the creation of the first cocktail, it began as a selected drink formula instead of a category of mixed drinks.
