Skip to main content
Drink

Improved Martini Cocktail

A cocktail made with orange bitters, Italian vermouth, dry gin, and cracked ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vermouth and gin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 94 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Improved Martini Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add a dash of orange bitters to a mixing glass.

  2. Pour in 1 ½ ounces of Italian vermouth and 1 ½ ounces of dry gin.

  3. Fill the glass with cracked ice.

  4. Stir the mixture well, then strain into a chilled glass and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Vermouth + gintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together94 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Orange + gintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together158 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Orange + vermouthtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dry gin
Provides the spirit base and the main aroma of the drink.
Italian vermouth
Adds sweetness and herbal depth, softening the gin's bite.
Orange bitters
Adds aromatic citrus and spice notes in a small amount.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture well. Stirring chills and dilutes the drink smoothly while keeping it clear. Shaking would add air and cloudiness, and too little stirring leaves the drink warm and harsh.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vermouth, gin):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vermouth, gin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes