Cosmopolitan

Make sure to get 100% cranberry juice and not a mix (a lot of cranberry juice bottles are mostly made up of apple juice).

For the garnish, use a slightly long matchstick. Lighters will impart an off-smell from the butane.

For best results, hold the flame next to the orange peel for a few seconds to warm up the oils. After that, squeeze the disc so that the oil gets lit up. Remember the peel (colored) side of the disc should be pointing at the drink.

Feel free to use regular vodka for this cocktail if you don't have a lemon flavored one.

As it goes with many cocktails, the origins of the Cosmopolitan are disputed.

Neal Murray claims to have created the recipe in 1975 at the Cork & Cleaver steak house in Minneapolis. According to Murray, the cocktail is a riff on a Kamikaze with an added splash of cranberry juice.

Cheryl Cook, a bartender from Strand Restaurant in South Beach, Florida also claims to have invented the drink. She says that serving it on a Martini glass came from watching guests ordering Martinis “just to be seen with one”.

Cook’s recipe aimed to be easier to drink than a Martini, but remain visually appealing by using the same glassware and making it “oh so pretty in pink”.

Cook’s recipe calls for Absolut Citron, which is the spirit that later became the standard when making a Cosmopolitan. She created the recipe right around the time Absolut Citron was being test marketed in Miami.

Dale DeGroff was one of the bartenders who skyrocketed the cocktail’s popularity. He was photographed serving it to Madonna in New York in the 90s. DeGroff is credited with adding the flamed orange disc garnish, which elevated the wow-factor of the drink.

What isn’t debated is that the Cosmo’s popularity is tied to the HBO Show Sex and the City, which debuted in 1998. The show is based on a column written by Candace Bushnell in the New York Observer.

Bushnell points out that brands like Absolut “were making a big push for the club crowd” in the late eighties / early nineties. She tried the cocktail and loved it, so much so, that she called it her signature drink. As the main character of the show is very much her alter-ego, it made sense that she would also drink them.

There is another cocktail called the Cosmopolitan from a compilation of recipes published in 1934. This older recipe has raspberry syrup instead of cranberry, and uses gin instead of vodka.

The combination of vodka, cranberry juice and lime juice is present in the Harpoon Cocktail. This recipe appeared in the label of an Ocean Spray (cranberry juice) bottle from 1968.