Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon (the Cocktail, Not the Book)

Another entry in our ongoing series of literary recipes to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Ernest Hemingway is famous for writing classic novels like For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and The Sea, and The Sun Also Rises. Apparently, he also liked to imbibe the occasional alcoholic beverage.

A recipe for a drink named after Hemingway’s novel Death in the Afternoon was published in the 1935 cocktail book So Red the Nose, or Breath in the Afternoon by Sterling North and Carl Kroch. Here’s that recipe–

Add one jigger of absinthe to a champagne flute
Add iced champagne until it attains the proper opalescence.
A small amount of sugar or Gomme syrup can be added to round it out, especially when using a verte absinthe.

Here’s Hemingway’s note on the drink’s origin–

This was arrived at by the author and three officers of the H.M.S. Danae after having spent seven hours overboard trying to get Capt. Bra Saunders’ fishing boat off a bank where she had gone with us in a N.W. gale.