The olive

, as a cocktail garnish, looms large in the popular imagination, even though the vast majority of bar olives are only used in one drink: the Martini. Though the lemon twist is often favored as the proper Martini garnish, a silhouetted Martini glass containing a toothpick-skewered olive may be the most recognized cocktail image in the world.

American bartenders began adding olives to their drinks in the mid-1890s as cutting-edge taste turned away from sweet drinks to dry ones. Labeling it a “recent fad,” one Brooklyn, New York, newspaper reassured its readers in 1896 that the practice of substituting an olive for the customary maraschino cherry “sounds rather less inviting that a test will prove” and that “the effect as one tastes the olive after draining the cocktail is pleasing.” By 1898, “cocktail olives” were being widely advertised. By then, a general principle had been formulated for their use: “The cherry should go with the sweet drink and the olive with the dry,” as one cocktail booklet put it that year. There were nonetheless those mixologists who called for the olive in sweet drinks such as the Rob Roy; their advice was and is rarely followed. See Rob Roy.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the olive as a garnish had made it to Europe and “American” bars worldwide. The height of its popularity was the first decade of the twentieth century (see, for example, Fox’s Bartender’s Guide, from 1902, which calls for it in eight of its twenty-seven cocktails, including such relatively sweet ones as the Bijou. See Bijou Cocktail). By the 1930s, however, the fad had faded, and the olive garnish belonged almost solely to the Martini.

Cocktail olives are typically green, usually Spanish, and sometimes stuffed with pimiento (the pepper-stuffed olive was introduced in 1897 as the “Pim-Ola” or “pimola”). The brine in an olive jar began to assume a supplemental role in bartending with the advent of the Dirty Martini, a vodka-based drink that became popular in the 1990s, wherein the spirit is supplemented with the brine from the olive jar.See also garnish and Martini.

Cocktails: How to Make Them. Providence, RI: Livermore & Knight, 1898.

Fox, Richard K. Fox’s Bartender’s Guide. New York: Richard K. Fox, 1902.

“A Recent Fad.” Brooklyn Life, April 11, 1896, 21.

By: Robert SimonsonSee Rob Roy.See Bijou Cocktail).See also garnish, Martini.