This is my classic Mamie Taylor Cocktail recipe! It is a new to me drink, but a classic!

Origin

Did you know that Mamie Taylor was an opera singer around the turn of the 20th century? I didn’t either. This is a fairly new cocktail for me. One story goes that she asked a bartender to concoct this cocktail. It’s like a scotch highball!

Another story is that she asked for a wine/lemon type drink but the bartender couldn’t comply so he concocted this for her and she loved it.

The rest is history.

Wait.

Is it really history if there are different versions of stories running around?

True History, nothing to do with this cocktail

I know that I’ve written before about having a degree in theater as well as doing a ton of theater in the past. Well, one thing I haven’t mentioned is that, along with straight plays, I also did musicals, a film and I sang opera.

I’m a classically trained singer and there were two different roles that I especially loved to perform.

One was from a short two act opera called “The Medium”, which was written by Gian Carlo Menotti. I played the lead, named Madam Flora. This character makes money off of other people’s grief by pretending to be a psychic who communicates with the dead. In the bogus seances she hosts, she makes her daughter pretend to be the dead child of grieving parents. As the opera progresses, Madam Flora starts hearing things, she becomes paranoid and eventually she goes mad.

The music was seriously challenging, but it was so much fun to play her.

My other favorite role is from a Gilbert and Sullivan light opera called “HMS Pinafore”. I played Buttercup, a middle-aged merchant woman who boards ships at port to hawk her wares among the sailors. The backstory revealed toward the end of the show is that, when Buttercup was young, she used to farm babies. On one fateful occasion, she mixed up two families’ baby boys so that the rich family got the poor family’s baby and vice versa. Silliness ensues.

Enough traveling down memory lane. On to the recipe.

Do you have a monkey on your shoulder? Well I have Monkey Shoulder scotch! What is your favorite brand? Leave me a comment to let me know.

The ingredients for the Mamie Taylor Cocktail and the mixing

We have scotch, lime juice and ginger beer! Easy peasy.

I grab my Collins glass and fill it with ice. Some peeps put this Mamie Taylor cocktail in a rocks or highball glass but I like the slim line of the Collins glass.

I measure out 2 ounces of scotch.

I pour the monkey shoulder into the glass and get the next ingredient. The lime juice.

I squeeze the lime and measure out 3/4 ounce of the precious liquid. I also cut a lime wedge for garnish.

Into the glass it goes.

Time to pop the ginger beer tab and pour out 4 ounces. Of course, you don’t have to measure out 4 ounces, you can fill the glass with the ginger beer, but make sure it’s at least 3 ounces.

I pour it into the glass. I take my handy dandy stirrer and stir the Mamie Taylor cocktail. I squeeze the lime wedge into the glass and plop it in.

Bottoms Up

Let’s look at the vertical view.

Yay! Are you up for peeping at the aerial view?

I hope you enjoyed this recipe!

Please feel free to leave me a comment, Pin any photo to Pinterest and Yum the recipe to Yummly.

And as always, may all your dishes/drinks be delish!