Singapore Slingshot

Recently I wrote the following for a great Slovak bar magazine, entitled appropriately enough, Bar Magazine. Occasionally Stanislav will contact me and ask me to create a recipe for him in the “molecular mixology style” that will fit in with the magazine’s theme of the month. This month the theme was Singapore Slings.

The Singapore Sling’s original recipe has always been one of speculation, but I’ve always been a fan of the one found in Robert Vermiere’s, Cocktails and How to Mix Them (1922), which holds true to the definition of a Sling with gin, Benedictine, cherry brandy, lemon juice, soda water, Angostura bitters and orange bitters as its ingredients. It should be noted that there were no Sling recipes with a juice other than lemon or lime in it before 1921, and therefore I eschew any recipe that calls for pineapple, orange or any other flavour of juice as a component in this venerable libation.

Today we are going to play around with the concept of the Singapore Sling, as many before me have, by offering up a “shooter”-sized recipe that has a twist: we are going to use some basic molecular mixology techniques to add visual and textural interest.

2 oz gin
2 dashes aromatic bitters
2 dashes orange bitters
6 cherry caviar
6 Benedictine caviar
place caviar into shot glass
carbonate gin and bitters with Perlini
strain into shot glass
garnish with candied lemon wedge

CHERRY HEERING CAVIAR
3 oz Cherry Heering
1 oz water
1 oz lemon juice
¼ oz sodium alginate
mix all ingredients together with an immersion blender
let sit for 5 minutes
place in plastic bag and vacuum seal
release seal and place mixture into a plastic squeeze bottle
drop small balls of mixture one by one into a calcium chloride bath
rinse with Cherry Heering when set
store in a 1:1 Cherry Heering/water bath

BENEDICTINE CAVIAR
4 oz Benedictine
1 oz water
¼ oz sodium alginate
mix all ingredients together with an immersion blender
let sit for 5 minutes
place in plastic bag and vacuum seal
release seal and place mixture into a plastic squeeze bottle
drop small balls of mixture one by one into a calcium chloride bath
rinse with Benedictine when set
store in a 1:1 Benedictine /water bath

You may notice that the Slingshot possesses all of the flavours of the original Sling: Benedictine and cherry in the form of bursting caviar, lemon juice in the form of the candied lemon wedge, and we’ve carbonated the gin and bitters with the Perlini cocktail system to give one the illusion of soda water, but with the alcoholic punch of a shot.

The Perlini is a fantastic system that acts as a cocktail shaker, but also allows one to carbonate the ingredients within. This allows me to not only carbonate the gin mixture, but also allows me to chill and properly dilute it, ensuring that the shot is indeed a pleasant one.

The proper way to imbibe the Slingshot would be to take a bite of the candied lemon, followed by a large sip of the shooter, thus ensuring that you have the sensation of lemon on your palate when you consume the liquid portion of the drink.

Santé.

Singapore Slingshot

Drink and picture by:
Jamie Boudreau
Cocktail Whisperer

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~ by Jamie Boudreau on January 25, 2009.