I started creating one-page study guides for my regular (and only) Sunday Special clientele, Chef Sin and her mom, detailing the history of each drink and how I made it. But it was a friend, the great musician Curtis Stigers<\/a>, who suggested I share both the drink recipes and their back stories so that others could follow along each week.<\/p>\n So off we go. As of today, the Sunday Special goes virtual.<\/p>\n And there’s no better way to begin than with a libation whose very name declares its pedigree and status: the Old Fashioned.<\/p>\n The earliest drink that could reasonably be called a modern cocktail looked a lot like an Old Fashioned but wasn’t called that, for the simple reason that comingling booze, bitters, sugar, and other stuff was a new idea in the early 19th century. Over the ensuing decades, mixed drinks became more and more elaborate\u2014until a bartender in Louisville, Ky., decided to get back to basics with a simple drink in the bygone style, one that would help sell more of an abundant local product: Kentucky bourbon. Or at least that’s the legend.<\/p>\n As Mittie Hellmich notes in the aptly titled Ultimate Bar Book<\/em><\/a>, the Old Fashioned itself has gone through permutations of its own in the past 130-odd years, spinning off such elaborate variations as the Eccentric (with cura\u00e7ao) and the Claremont (with muddled maraschino cherries). In recent years, though, the country’s best bartenders have elected to make the Old Fashioned old-fashioned again; the three top picks in the recent PUNCH Ultimate Old-Fashioned Contest<\/a> are all variations on the whiskey-sugar-bitters formula, with the differences coming mostly in the types of spirits used.<\/p>\n Cuisine Stupide’s favorite version, too, sticks to the essentials: rye whiskey, a few dashes of Angostura bitters, and a bit of superfine sugar.<\/p>\n Even the orange garnish is optional\u2014but hey, it’s Sunday. Celebrate.<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/p>\nOld Fashioned<\/h3>\n