MxMo: Princess Alice Cocktail

I’m a late arrival at Mixology Monday*, but I hope I’ll be forgiven. I found out today I’ll be traveling tomorrow with my boss’ boss and hoping to be helpful at meetings with customers on Wednesday. So, I certainly could use a drink tonight. Joe, poor/lucky devil is in Chicago for work so I made a very tiny drink.

I stopped by at Nopa on my way home for dinner & a drink or two. (Note: there are no slow nights at Nopa so I was lucky to walk right up to a bar seat). Along with my New Ideal and an unnamed Manhattan variant using port & an absinthe rinse, I got a taste of the end of the shaker of a variant on the Last Word which Neyah was mixing for another patron.

As I was marveling at the way it evoked C. Howard’s violet candies without any violet in it, Kitty enlightened me. "Oh yes, Maraschino liqueur and grapefruit always brings out those flower tastes, violet, lavender."

Well I never knew that and it was an astonishing effect, so when I arrived home and started looking in the 1908/1914 edition** of good ol’ San Franciscan William "Cocktail" Boothby’s The World’s Drinks and How to Mix Them, this jumped out at me:

Victoria
From the recipe of my old associates, Jim and Joe Marshall, The Strand, London

Place half a pony glassful of Creme Yvette (Violette) on the bar-top; then shake up about two teaspoonfuls of absinthe with a little cracked ice and strain the same over the cordial in the pony-glass. That’s all.

I don’t know if it evokes Creme Yvette quite, but  .75 oz of grapefuit juice to .25oz of Luxardo Maraschino liqueur, with a tiny dash of Creme de Violette seems to work just dandy for my purposes.

I’m not quite singin’ about badgers tonight like Some People I Know, but I have listened to Jug Band Music by The Lovin’ Spoonful about eight times to my intense pleasure.

* Yes, yes, local angle a bit weak, but it is a 100 year old cocktail book published in my fair city, photographed in the historical collection of the San Francisco Public Library, and I did use a local Absinthe and a grapefruit from my produce delivery box. Also, hey, props to local bartenders counts for something, right?
*I’m not looking in the appendix so I believe they’re the same.