The Wondrich Take:
What is now in the center was once at the margin. In the history of ideas, the inquiring mind will identify a constant do-si-do between "no way" and "of course"; between stuff that nobody thinks and stuff that everybody thinks. One day the idea of a single god who created everything and sacrificed his own begotten son to rescue humankind from eternal damnation will get you turned into lion chow. Then, bam! Paradigm shift, and you get burned alive if you're not on the monotheism tip. Or take that guy Galileo...You get the idea. No matter which field of human knowledge you examine, which art or science, you find the same dynamic. The art of mixing drinks (or is it the science of mixology?) is no different. Case in point, the White Russian.
Roll the clock back to 1930 or so, and, if you look hard enough, you might just turn up a couple of little gloom-lifters based on vodka, then a little-known novelty spirit from the land of Rasputin and tractor-building collectives. There's the Russian, which mixes the stuff in equal proportion with gin and crème de cacao. If you don't like that (and, truth be told, there's not much reason why you should), you can have a Barbara: two parts vodka, one part crème de cacao, one part cream. Of course, that one's even more marginal. Back then, cream was rarely found in drinks outside the uber-girly precincts of the Pousse Café (the multilayered liqueur anthology; it is, alas, still with us).
Over the next 30 years, a lot of things happened that we really don't want to get into, and a few that we do, among them the Russian losing its gin (a lot of that going around) and trading in its dowdy old crème de cacao for the trendy new Kahlúa. And the Barbara getting renamed the Russian Bear (the fact that somebody felt that this deeply frilly drink needed toughening up namewise speaks volumes about the evolution of postwar American drinking), and then losing the "Bear" and doing the Kahlúa shuffle as well. By the end of the '50s, in other words, there are two vodka-Kahlúa Russians out there, with and without cream. This final stage is documented in the 1961 Diners' Club Drink Book, which pins a "Black" on the no-cream one, implying that there's a white one out there from which it must be distinguished.
At any rate, this period of careful evolution was time well spent. By the end of the next decade, the White Russian assumed its present place: straddling the world of mixed drinking like the Colossus of Rhodes, one foot planted firmly among the folks who never drink, the other among those who always do. Lightweights and lushes. Now, this isn't as weird a constituency as it might appear. Like its cousin the Brandy Alexander, the White Russian so effectively lubricates the hefty dose of alcohol it contains that it goes down the hatch with no resistance whatsoever. That's good if you're not used to the stuff -- or too used to it (see The Big Lebowski, in which they provide the bulk of the Dude's daily nutrition). And besides, gargle down a martini every 20 minutes, and you might as well be sporting a scarlet "D" (for "Drunk"). But these sweet, creamy deceivers look so innocuous, it's hard to take them seriously. That's called denial.
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Ingredients
- 1 1/2 oz. vodka
- 3/4 oz. Kahlua
- 3/4 oz. heavy cream
- old-fashioned glass
Directions
- Step1Shake well with cracked ice, then strain into a chilled Old-Fashioned glass (it'll look less wicked than in a martini glass; that's important).
- Step2 Some folks build this one on the rocks, floating the cream on top. No.
The Wondrich Take:
What is now in the center was once at the margin. In the history of ideas, the inquiring mind will identify a constant do-si-do between "no way" and "of course"; between stuff that nobody thinks and stuff that everybody thinks. One day the idea of a single god who created everything and sacrificed his own begotten son to rescue humankind from eternal damnation will get you turned into lion chow. Then, bam! Paradigm shift, and you get burned alive if you're not on the monotheism tip. Or take that guy Galileo...You get the idea. No matter which field of human knowledge you examine, which art or science, you find the same dynamic. The art of mixing drinks (or is it the science of mixology?) is no different. Case in point, the White Russian.
Roll the clock back to 1930 or so, and, if you look hard enough, you might just turn up a couple of little gloom-lifters based on vodka, then a little-known novelty spirit from the land of Rasputin and tractor-building collectives. There's the Russian, which mixes the stuff in equal proportion with gin and crème de cacao. If you don't like that (and, truth be told, there's not much reason why you should), you can have a Barbara: two parts vodka, one part crème de cacao, one part cream. Of course, that one's even more marginal. Back then, cream was rarely found in drinks outside the uber-girly precincts of the Pousse Café (the multilayered liqueur anthology; it is, alas, still with us).
Over the next 30 years, a lot of things happened that we really don't want to get into, and a few that we do, among them the Russian losing its gin (a lot of that going around) and trading in its dowdy old crème de cacao for the trendy new Kahlúa. And the Barbara getting renamed the Russian Bear (the fact that somebody felt that this deeply frilly drink needed toughening up namewise speaks volumes about the evolution of postwar American drinking), and then losing the "Bear" and doing the Kahlúa shuffle as well. By the end of the '50s, in other words, there are two vodka-Kahlúa Russians out there, with and without cream. This final stage is documented in the 1961 Diners' Club Drink Book, which pins a "Black" on the no-cream one, implying that there's a white one out there from which it must be distinguished.
At any rate, this period of careful evolution was time well spent. By the end of the next decade, the White Russian assumed its present place: straddling the world of mixed drinking like the Colossus of Rhodes, one foot planted firmly among the folks who never drink, the other among those who always do. Lightweights and lushes. Now, this isn't as weird a constituency as it might appear. Like its cousin the Brandy Alexander, the White Russian so effectively lubricates the hefty dose of alcohol it contains that it goes down the hatch with no resistance whatsoever. That's good if you're not used to the stuff -- or too used to it (see The Big Lebowski, in which they provide the bulk of the Dude's daily nutrition). And besides, gargle down a martini every 20 minutes, and you might as well be sporting a scarlet "D" (for "Drunk"). But these sweet, creamy deceivers look so innocuous, it's hard to take them seriously. That's called denial.
