The dip

, a mixture of whisky, syrup, and ice with orange peel, is one of the more obscure categories of mixed drinks, but in that very obscurity it serves to illustrate the difficulties of writing drink history and the assumptions upon which one must rely in the process. In 1884, a Philadelphia publisher issued a bartender’s guide by one Albert Barnes, about whom nothing is known other than the fact that he worked at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York and the strong possibility that he was a Philadelphian. The Thomas, Jerry. Tucked in at the end of his drinks section, however, are a few new, individual drinks, including a Whisky Dip and a Cape May Dip (a Whisky Dip with added Jamaica syrup). It would be easy to dismiss these as Barnes’s own creations, save for a second book, Mixology, by Joseph L. Haywood (1866–1916).

Haywood, who tended bar and ran saloons in Wilmington, Delaware, included a “Whiskey Dip” and a Cape May Dipsey in his book, neither of them identical to Barnes’s versions. They do not appear in any other book, or indeed anywhere else. There are two possible conclusions: either the dip was a genre of drink peculiar to the small triangle between Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Cape May, New Jersey, or Haywood simply copied the recipes from Barnes, directly or indirectly, editing them as he saw fit. Based on the evidence we have, there is no way to definitively state which is correct.

This situation is an extreme version of one common with many lesser-known drinks and categories of drinks. Because they keep appearing in drink books, modern mixographers often assume they enjoyed a wide and enduring popularity, when in fact it is just as possible that the drink lived only in those books and had either never caught on or had already seen its heyday come and go. Absent independent confirmation from other contemporary sources, to choose one option or the other is to jump to conclusions. As for the dip, we include it as a caution and as a tribute to either a part of America underexplored by drink historians or a pair of skilled, if obscure, bartenders enterprising enough to get their drinks in print. It is also, it must be noted, the first American iced drink on record to include scotch whisky.

*Recipe (Whisky Dip): Combine in rocks glass with cracked ice: 60 ml scotch whisky and 5 ml pineapple syrup. Stir and twist orange peel over the top.

Barnes, Albert. The Complete Bartender. Philadelphia: Crawford, 1884.

Haywood, Joseph L. Mixology*. Wilmington, DE: Press of the Sunday Star, 1898.

By: David Wondrich