The puff
From The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails
is an archaic and seldom-spotted family of mixed drinks wherein a spirit is mixed with milk or cream, lengthened with soda water, and served on ice. Its first known appearance in print was at the end of 1882, when a bartender described it in the pages of the New York Sun as “a seductive, effervescent, creamy sort of throat-cooler, made out of gin, seltzer water, milk, and sugar. You puff it by shaking it up.” By 1895 it had made it into cocktails books but either minus the sugar, as in George Kaeppler’s iconic Modern American Drinks, or with added egg white, as in Herbert Green’s Mixed Drinks.
The puff’s exact origin is not known, but it is one of a large class of drinks that appeared in the 1880s and were influenced by soda-fountain drinks; among the others are the Gin Fizz, the Silver Gin Fizz, the Cream Puff (a rum-based drink), and even the redoubtable Ramos Gin Fizz. See fizz and Ramos Gin Fizz.
The earliest versions of the puff all appear to be based on gin (when specified, it is the English Old Tom version), but whisky and brandy versions appear by 1889, although they are at first rare. By the early twentieth century, however, the puff had spread internationally, being mentioned in Continental bartending books such as the German Lexicon der getränke, by Hans Schönfeld and John Leybold (1913), and the Swiss Barkeeper’s Golden Book, by Otto Blunier (1935). There, it had transmogrified into a true family with rum, brandy, and whisky versions mentioned.
Unfortunately for the puff, the modern mixology revival has generally spurned cream- and milk-based drinks, so this family has declined and these days is infrequently spotted and even less frequently appreciated. However, recently versions of the drink have reappeared in the United States under the new name “lifts,” popularized by the San Francisco bartender Jennifer Colliau.
“Delicatessen.” Aspen (CO) Evening Chronicle, December 11, 1889, 2.
“Kinnickabine Bake.” New York Sun, November 19, 1882, 3.
Willett, Andrew. Elemental Mixology. Portland, OR: Lulu.com, 2011.
By: Angus WinchesterSee fizz, Ramos Gin Fizz.
This definition is from The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, edited by David Wondrich (Editor-in-Chief) and Noah Rothbaum (Associate Editor).