How to Cocktail: Recipes and Techniques for Building the Best Drinks

With their trial-and-error approach for perfection, the America’s Test Kitchen cooks step away from the stove for this, their first cocktail manual. The book includes a broad spectrum of precise classic and updated recipes: Irish coffee is sampled at a variety of java to whiskey proportions and with three different types of sugar before landing on a four-to-one ratio sweetened with basic simple syrup; a more radical caffeinated concoction, turning up in a chapter of shaken beverages, is an espresso martini that substitutes rum and Bénédictine for the traditional vodka. Equally daring, among the stirred offerings is the new-fashioned gin and tonic, which employs a tonic syrup rather than the effervescent version to create a still and stiff quaff made for a rocks glass. For fans of vegetables, there’s a celery gimlet as well as the Alcachofa, which blends tequila with the artichoke-based liqueur Cynar. Party hosts will welcome the chapter of “big batch” recipes while teetotalers will appreciate the numerous nonalcoholic offerings including the Sicilian sojourn, made with tarragon and blood orange juice. The concluding chapters offer a vast assortment of homemade syrups, bitters, rim salts and sugars, liqueurs, and vermouths. Foolproof and high-proof, this thoroughly researched and easy to follow volume will steady the hand of any home mixologist. (Oct.)