Japanese Cocktail

This is a stirred drink even though orgeat makes people reach for a shaker. Stirring keeps it clear and lets the cognac stay in charge. Orgeat wants time on the ice — if you stir for ten seconds you will pour a brandy with an almond puddle. Taste from the mixing glass: when the sweetness is even from top to bottom, strain. A tired lemon twist is worse than no twist; cut a fresh one and express it with the peel facing the drink.

Two ounces of cognac to half an ounce of orgeat is the house ratio — enough almond to read, not enough to become dessert. Use a real orgeat (Small Hand Foods, Liber & Co, or the house syrup) rather than almond-flavored simple. Pierre Ferrand 1840 or Rémy Martin VSOP both have the dried-fruit weight this drink needs. Two dashes of Angostura are structural; skip them and the almond sits there smiling. If your orgeat is very sweet, cut it to ⅓ oz.

Jerry Thomas printed the Japanese Cocktail in How to Mix Drinks in 1862: brandy, orgeat, bitters, lemon. It has nothing to do with Japanese whisky. The usual story is a compliment to the first Japanese embassy’s visit to New York in 1860. Whether or not that story is tidy, the recipe is: three ingredients, stirred, from the first great American bar book. It is the ancestor of every brandy-and-orgeat drink that came after, including the Army & Navy’s gin cousin.

Army & Navy

When the bottle on the bar is gin, not cognac, make an Army & Navy: gin, lemon, orgeat, bitters, shaken. Same almond idea, brighter and sour. Use it in warm weather.

Calvados Japanese

Replace the cognac with a VSOP Calvados when you want baked apple instead of dried fruit. Keep the orgeat at ½ oz — apple and almond is a farmhouse pairing, not a dessert dump.