Sweet success

There is one ingredient which all self-respecting cocktail bars and even home cocktail cabinets have on hand – bitters. Although Angostura Bitters is perhaps the best known and most iconic, any from a long chorus line of brands is equally at home in a host of cocktails from a Bloody Mary to an Old Fashioned to a Pisco Sour to a Champagne Cocktail. Bitters is a curious ingredient with a fascinating history starting life in Ancient Egypt as a medicinal product and continuing that primary role into  early 1800s Europe. From there, it found its way into cocktails across Europe and the US. For example, Peychaud's Bitters – a component of the classic Sazerac cocktail  – was created in New Orleans around 1850. In England, meanwhile, bitters concoctions had an even earlier nascence. Stoughton’s Great Cordial Elixir was patented as a medicinal product as far back as 1712, but it was always destined to be an ingredient of mixed drinks. Comprising 22 separate elements – including, wormwood, rhubarb, aloe, gentian, bitter orange peel and cochineal, all marinated in brandy and spices. Indeed, Stoughton’s Bitters, as it became known, was a mixed drink (or cocktail) in its own right.