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Drink · 4 min · 1 rocks glass

Vieux Carré

Rye and cognac together under vermouth and two bitters. A New Orleans drink and one of the richest things on this list.

The sheet · 1 rocks glass · 4 min

medium

Why tonight. Rye and cognac together under vermouth and two bitters. A New Orleans drink and one of the richest things on this list.

What it needs

Nothing confirmed on your shelf yet — this list is the whole ask.

  • rye
  • cognac
  • sweet vermouth
  • angostura

Method

  1. Equal parts rye, cognac and sweet vermouth — 1 oz each — a bar spoon of Bénédictine, two dashes of Angostura, two of Peychaud's.
  2. Stir long over ice and serve over a big cube.
  3. Two spirits is the idea and neither should win. If one does, it is usually the rye and the fix is a fuller vermouth.
  4. Named for the French Quarter, and it drinks like a Manhattan that went abroad.

An educational pour, not a reprint of a licensed spec. No allergen or alcohol-safety claim.

Cook or pour it, then edit the shelf if you emptied a bottle or used the last of something.

Why each of these is on the list

What the ingredients are actually doing

rye
Spice and a dry, peppery edge, which is why a rye drink tastes leaner than the same drink in bourbon.
cognac
Grape spirit with fruit and oak, which makes it rounder and less spiky than whiskey in the same drink.
sweet vermouth
Fortified wine, which means it is perishable — an open bottle on a warm shelf is why so many home Manhattans taste dusty.
angostura
Bitters are seasoning for a drink — the salt of the bar.

Missing one of them? The substitutions are written against those jobs rather than against a chart, so they say what each replacement costs this dish in particular.

Cooks from the same box

If you bought for this, you can already make these

Next

Cook it, then tell the shelf what you used.

The ranking is only as honest as the shelf behind it. Empty the cream, and everything that leaned on cream should stop being offered.

Update the shelfWhy rye and cognac workBack to the ranking