Gin & Tonic
October 29, 2024
Recipe available on liquor.com.
Disease prevention in a glass, right here! Not really. But that was the idea when this drink was invented. Doctors believed that quinine could be used to prevent malaria, but quinine is very bitter. So, in the late 1800s, British officers in India added water, sugar, lime, and gin to the quinine so they could get it down. Turns out that you can’t drink enough tonic to prevent malaria (67 liters a day), but the drink is tasty.
But you can consume enough lime to prevent scurvy, so there’s that!
Along those lines, it was about this time that American sailors began calling British sailors “lime-juicers” or “limeys”, because of all of the citrus fruit they consumed. As far as taunting playground nicknames go, that’s kind of a nice name. “You non-scurvy-having, no-scab face!” 😆
The Gin and Tonic is gin, tonic, lime, and lots of ice. That’s it! This is one of the very few cocktails I was familiar with before this project, and I already knew that I liked it.
(Originally posted May 1, 2020)