The Perfect Sazerac

The only recipe you'll ever need

The best recipes for classic cocktails come from books. Sure, there are websites, apps, magazines, and newsletters that may do a solid job, but I’ve found books to be the only place to reliably find high-quality, well-vetted recipes, especially for classic cocktails that were invented prior to recorded cocktail history and may have dozens of formulations.

One such cocktail is the Sazerac. Invented sometime in the second half of the 19th century in New Orleans, it’s undergone numerous iterations, making it hard to parse through exactly how you should make it. My go-to Sazerac recipe used to be one from David Wondrich that involved muddling a sugar cube with bitters, adding rye, and then pouring into a chilled glass rinsed with absinthe. It was good, but there’s a better one out there — a perfect one, even.

Enter Neal Bodenheimer’s Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em (Abrams, 2022), a fantastic compilation of classic and modern New Orleans cocktail recipes, presented together with stories of the city’s history and culture. If you don’t own this book, you should pick up a copy — preferably at the Garden District Book Shop.

A mere 27 pages into Cure, we get a Sazerac recipe. While not radically different from other recipes, I appreciate how easy it makes it to execute a precise and perfect Sazerac. Instead of rinsing the glass, it relies on spritzing Herbsaint from an atomizer (better both for glass coverage and precise dosage). Instead of relying on imprecise and highly variable dashes, it uses a dropper bottle for the Peychaud’s bitters. It also leverages easily measured Demerara Syrup instead of a muddled sugar cube.

This recipe is so good that for a while I was making one of these every night, and I now keep a stack of constantly chilled Sazerac glasses in my refrigerator at all times:

Sazerac

• 4 spritzes Herbsaint

• 2 oz Sazerac rye whiskey

• ¼ oz Demerara Syrup

• 23 drops Peychaud’s bitters

• Lemon peel, for garnish

Spritz the Herbsaint from an atomizer into the interior of a chilled double old-fashioned glass. Combine the rye, Demerara syrup, and bitters in a mixing glass filled with ice and stir to chill. Strain into the prepared double old-fashioned glass, garnish with the lemon peel, and serve.
☞ Neal Bodenheimer / Cure, reprinted with permission

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