The Millionaire Cocktail is not as romanticized as the Southside or as revered as a Whiskey Sour. Little is known about this Prohibition-era cocktail except that it was a popular name for cocktails of that time. We have found five different cocktails carrying the moniker, with recipes varying from whiskey to rum to gin. Even Harry Craddock, author of The Savoy Cocktail Book, listed two completely unrelated recipes as Millionaire Cocktail No. 1 and Millionaire Cocktail No. 2. The first consists of Jamaican rum, apricot brandy, sloe gin, lime juice and grenadine; the second includes anisette, egg white, gin and absinthe. We have provided the Millionaire recipe from The How and When cocktail book by Hyman Gale and Gerald F. Marco, first printed in 1938. Although it inspired the name for our Billionaire Cocktail, we made some slight adjustments to the proportions and added lemon juice for balance.
Reprinted with permission from Speakeasy by Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric. Copyright (c) 2010 by Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.