Brown Derby

refers to two different cocktails: a rum-based drink created on the East Coast during the 1930s and a bourbon concoction often linked to “the golden age of Hollywood.”

This later version reputedly was invented in Hollywood during the 1930s and named for the Brown Derby restaurant, whose original location was shaped like an actual derby hat. The Tinseltown connection seems to have come from a single source, George Buzza Jr.’s Hollywood Cocktails (1933), which claimed to be a collection of recipes for cocktails served at famous Hollywood nightclubs and restaurants. In reality, Buzza copied dozens of recipes from The Savoy Cocktail Book, including the De Rigueur, which he renamed “the Brown Derby,” although there is no evidence that it was ever served at the Brown Derby or anywhere else in Hollywood.

The Brown Derby was rediscovered in the early 2000s. Dale DeGroff published it in his pioneering volume The Craft of the Cocktail (2002), and it soon made its way into other bartenders’ guides, including Jim Meehan’s influential PDT Cocktail Book (2011), thereby “reviving” a classic cocktail that never actually existed.

In 1930s New York City, however, there was an actual cocktail called the Brown Derby, though it was made from dark rum, maple sugar, and lime juice. The drink was mentioned in Esquire’s “Painting the Town” column in 1935, in which the author mentioned drinking one at the “Amen Corner of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.” Four years later, the magazine published a recipe for the drink in Murdock Pemberton’s “Potables” column. That recipe would appear periodically in bartender’s guides and magazine articles until the 1990s, but it never achieved lasting popularity.

*Recipe (faux-Hollywood version): Combine 60 ml bourbon whisky, 30 ml fresh grapefruit juice, and 15ml honey syrup in a shaker with cracked ice. Shake well, strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.

Recipe (East Coast Rum version): Combine 60 ml dark rum, 30 ml fresh lime juice, and 5 ml maple syrup in a shaker with cracked ice. Shake well, strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.

See also Craddock, Harry Lawson; DeGroff, Dale.

Craddock, Harry. The Savoy Cocktail Book. London: Constable, 1930.

DeGroff, Dale. The Craft of the Cocktail. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2002.

Pemberton, Murdock. “Potables.” Esquire, June 1939.

Wondrich, David. “Brown Derby.” Esquire*, November 5, 2007, http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/recipes/a3656/brown-derby-drink-recipe/(accessed February 4, 2021).

By: Robert F. MossSee also Craddock, Harry Lawson; DeGroff, Dale.