Whiskey Sour

This authentic recipe of the period is from Just Cocktails, published in 1939.

  • 1/2 lemon juice
  • powdered sugar
  • 1/2 rye

    Shake with ice and strain into glass. Garnish with half-slice of lemon and a cherry.

    		• If the tea-rooms conducted by ladies want to celebrate "cocktail hour at two p.m. that is their business, of course, but they ought not to be so doggy about it. They should quite frankly come out with signs saying "Pick-Me-Up Hour! Whisky Sours and Bismarck Herring for Receding Heads."
      –"Cocktail Hour" by Robert Benchley
    Whiskey -- Rye or Scotch
      The first glass of rye he lifted to his lips came as a nostalgic, jarring shock. He got it just beneath his nose, smelled it, and put the glass down, his mind swimming back to what the odor had made him think of. "My God," he said, after a moment. "It's Uncle Albert." He remembered his Uncle Albert Prentice, in Worcester, and he remembered what he had always thought was Uncle Albert's personal bouquet; now it turned out that Uncle Albert had been walking around in a cloud of rye-whisky fumes...Robert sipped his rye and smiled, and thought of Uncle Albert.
        –Robert Benchley, a Biography by Nathaniel Benchley (page 164)

      The bar, if such it could be called, was just what was necessary to meet the needs of the moment, and was usually located on top a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, near the closet...There were also three glass decanters, marked "Scotch," "Rye," and "Sherry." The Scotch and rye decanters could usually be trusted, but the sherry one was something of a catchall, and might contain anything from muscatel to mouthwash. A small bottle, labeled "Hot Drops," held what sherry there was.
        –Robert Benchley, a Biography by Nathaniel Benchley (page 187)