Carla

[muckefuck]

monshu may not have gotten much done today, but the sweetheart did bring me passionfruit juice because he remembered it being an ingredient in one of the cocktails I was wanting to try. Which one he couldn't recall, but that hardly matters. It was the Carla, which intrigued me as the first mixed drink I've come across that calls specifically for jenever, which I happen to be fan of. Proportions? 'Tuurlijk!

• 1½ measures jenever (jonge)
• 2 measures orange juice
• 1 measure passionfruit juice
• 2 measures lemon-lime soda [ginger ale was what I had on hand]

Met één woord? Tegenvallende. I mean, it's a perfectly nice drink, there's simply nothing of the distinctiveness of jenever in it. Make it with any other gin--possibly even vodka--and you'd get much the same result. Must try it again upping the liquor quotient (which'll cost me, but it's all in a spirit of impartial inquiry, hoor?).

Update: Tried it with twice the jenever and tasted only that, so I dialed everything else up by half and got a better balance. (For those of you weak on your math: That ends up being the recipe as written except with the 2 measures jenever.) Still can't imagine going through the trouble of finding real passionfruit juice just to make it.

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

You'll definitely want to pick up a copy of David Wondrich's Imbibe, a historical investigation into 19th (and barely 20th) century cocktails centered around the work of "Professor" Jerry Thomas, an early celebrated mixologist. Pretty much all the gin recipes call for genever-- except for the few that call for the no-longer-extant Old Tom-- though of the oude variety. (According to him, jonge originated in WWI, and so is too late for the period he's looking at.)

(I don't have any genever of either sort as yet, so I can't comment on the drinks themselves.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Good luck finding any oude in the US! Sam's was the only place we knew that carried it, and their selection has been declining ever since they went corporate. We haven't seen any there in well over a year now.