On 2008-05-28, Adam Funk wrote:

>> "A Mixture of Frailties" by Robertson Davies mentions the following
>> cocktail:
>> ...the Canadian Lyric, a cocktail made of equal parts of lemion
>> juice and maple syrup, added to a double portion of rye whisky, and
>> shaken up with cracked ice.
....
> The text doesn't fully specify the ratios (just x:x:2y), so my initial
> experiment was with x=y: one jigger of lemon juice, one of maple
> syrup, and two of Canadian Club, shaken vigorously with non-cracked
> ice (because I don't have a fancy ice crusher and didn't feel like
> hammering it).
>
> Not bad, but probably not to everyone's taste. I still can't decide
> whether Davies was winding his readers up. I'll try a ratio of 1:1:4
> later this week and report back.

The 1:1:4 was still so-so. I think RD was trolling.

But I'm working on an interesting variation of Amis's Old-Fashioned
recipe (for which he says "You really have to use bourbon. The Rye
Old-Fashioned is not too bad; the Irish version just tolerable; the
Scotch one not worth while."). (Elsewhere in _On drink_ he recommends
preparing sugar syrup in advance for this and other cocktails, so I
think maple syrup is in order here.)

dashes of Angostura
squeezins of half a clementine/satsuma
maraschino/glacé cherry
2 or 3 tsp maple syrup
"big slug" of Canadian Club
"stir furiously"
3 ice cubes

I've been recently advised that Amis wrote two further books on the
subject, which are now back in print as a compendium!


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