Cocktail accessorizing

Delicious-looking in the flesh, and highly appealing when photographed and used as a recipe-book illustration, garnished cocktails are not only eye-catching but promise additional flavour and nutrition. Ironically, including fruits in cocktails had a very different purpose originally. The practice goes back to the 1920s and the early years of US Prohibition when the illegal liquor trade was dependent on moonshine and bathtub gin, much of which was not only contaminated by hazardous ingredients, but was foul tasting. Consequently, to mask the flavour and make the taste more palatable, speakeasy barmen used fruits, syrups and mixers to divert attention from the sub-par alcohol. Of course, cocktails and the alcohol in them have come a long way since then and the purpose of the garnish today is to heighten the visual impact and enhance the taste experience. Garnishes for cocktails today seem limitless containing everything from olives and silver-skin onions to edible flowers and candied ginger, to assorted fresh herbs and chunks of fresh fruit, to grated nutmeg and edible gold leaf, to an assortment of syrups, marshmallows and crushed biscuits. In fact, the effort that goes into embellishing a cocktail is often greater than mixing the liquid ingredients. That said, today’s discerning cocktail customers know when their drink is underdressed or wrongly accessorised and have come to expect their drinks to be suitably garnished. The humble lemon, for example, can be served as a wedge, a slice, a wheel, a sliver of rind or in zest form, depending on which cocktail it’s accompanying.