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Betsy Ross

After dinner/digestif · Classic/vintage · Nightcap/sipping

4.2 69 ratings

Ingredients

1 1/2 oz Cognac (brandy)
1 1/2 oz Tawny port
1/6 oz Orange Curaçao
1 dash Aromatic bitters

How to make

Serve in a nick & nora glass

Prepare

  1. 1 Select and pre-chill a NICK & NORA GLASS.
  2. 2 Prepare garnish of orange zest twist.

Method

  1. 3 STIR all ingredients with ice.
  2. 4 STRAIN into chilled glass.

Garnish

  1. 5 EXPRESS orange zest twist over the cocktail and use as garnish.

Flavour profile

23.7% alc./vol. · 1.6 standard drinks · 188 calories

History

Deep burgundy red and boozy. Based on port and brandy, this cocktail ends the night. (Benefits from dilution, so stir well.)

This drink, a blend of brandy, port, and curaçao, is also identified as the "Imperial." It first appears with this name in William "Cocktail Bill" Boothby's World's Drinks And How To Mix Them, published in 1934 after his death. IMPERIAL Cognac . . . . . . . . . . 1/3 jigger Port Wine . . . . . . . . 1/3 jigger Curacoa . . . . . . . . . . 1/3 jigger Shake well with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass and serve. Later, it showed up under the name Betty Ross on the 1932-1933 season menu from Cuba's renowned Sloppy Joe bar, using proportions that are favored. BETTY ROSS One half glass of Fundador Cognac. One half glass of Oporto Wine. Drops of Curacao. Drops of Angostura Bitters. Shake with cracked ice and serve in a Manhattan glass. In 1940, the cocktail resurfaced, this time called Betsy Ross (its current name), in Crosby Gaige's 1940 Cocktail Guide and Ladies' Companion. Betsy Ross Cocktail 1 jigger Brandy 1 jigger Port Wine 2 dashes Angostura Bitters Dash of Curaçao Stir well in cracked ice and strain into large cocktail glass. Try this one with the yolk of 1 egg and 1 teaspoon sugar. Sprinkle a grating of nutmeg on the top of each glass. In any event you don't have to buy lunch. Who was Betsy Ross? Legend claims Betsy Ross stitched the first U.S. flag. No evidence supports this, but she was the niece of George Ross, a Founding Father of the United States who represented Pennsylvania in signing the United States Declaration of Independence. She also reportedly prayed in the pew adjacent to George Washington and had sewn buttons for him. It is likely that the Continental Congress's Flag Committee members requested Betsy sew the flag. In an affidavit made public in 1870, Betsy Ross's daughter, Rachel Fletcher, stated: "[The committee] showed her [Betsy Ross] a drawing roughly executed, of the flag as it was proposed to be made by the committee, and that she saw in it some defects in its proportions and the arrangement and shape of the stars. That she said it was square and a flag should be one third longer than its width, that the stars were scattered promiscuously over the field, and she said they should be either in lines or in some adopted form as a circle, or a star, and that the stars were six-pointed in the drawing, and she said they should be five pointed."

Also known as Imperial