Cosmopolitan Recipe
Cosmopolitan Ingredients
1.5 oz / 45 ml Citron vodka (Absolut Citron is the original)
.75 oz / 22 ml Cointreau
.75 oz / 22 ml Fresh lime juice
.5 oz / 15 ml Cranberry juice cocktail
Orange peel
How to make a Cosmopolitan
Chill a coupe or martini glass in the freezer first. This drink is served up with no ice, so the glass does the chilling after the pour.
Add the vodka, Cointreau, lime juice and cranberry juice to a shaker. Fill with ice and shake hard for 12 to 15 seconds.
Double strain through a fine mesh strainer into the chilled glass so no ice chips or lime pulp come through.
Garnish with an orange peel. The classic move is to flame it: hold the peel skin-side toward the drink, warm it with a lighter for a second, then pinch it so the oils spray through the flame and onto the surface. Or just twist it over the drink and drop it in.
Vodka: citron vodka is the original and it matters. The lemon in the vodka is a third of the citrus in the drink. Plain vodka works if you add a quarter ounce more lime.
Orange liqueur: Cointreau. Triple sec is sweeter and thinner and you'll taste the difference.
Cranberry: cranberry juice cocktail, the sweetened kind, is correct here. Pure unsweetened cranberry juice is too tart at this ratio; if that's what you have, add a quarter ounce of simple syrup.
Batching for a crowd: multiply everything by the number of drinks, stir it together in a pitcher without ice, and keep it in the fridge. Shake two servings at a time with ice when people are ready. Don't pre-dilute it; it goes flat.
The Cosmopolitan is a sour with a splash of cranberry: citron vodka, Cointreau, fresh lime and just enough cranberry juice to turn it pink. It got famous on Sex and the City and spent twenty years as a punchline, which is unfair, because made right it's a sharp, dry, citrusy drink and nothing like the sweet bar versions that gave it the reputation.
The recipe most people credit is Toby Cecchini's from the Odeon in New York, 1988: Absolut Citron, Cointreau, lime and cranberry. The trick is the cranberry. Half an ounce is for color and a little tartness. Pour in two ounces and you've made a vodka cranberry in a fancy glass.
It's also a Thanksgiving drink hiding in plain sight. Cranberry, citrus, served up, easy to make four at a time in one shaker while the turkey rests.
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