{"id":1601,"date":"2017-05-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.newyorkcafe.hu\/koktel-a-szines-varazslat\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T13:41:34","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T12:41:34","slug":"cocktails-the-colourful-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/koktel-a-szines-varazslat\/","title":{"rendered":"Cocktails \u2013 a colourful spell"},"content":{"rendered":"Nowadays, we can find refreshing, mood-lifting mixed drinks almost anywhere; we collectively refer to them as cocktails. However, these marvellous drinks have been with us for a very long time, although there is a difference in purpose between the early experiments and the drinks we now refer to as cocktails.<\/strong>\n\nCocktails are defined by the fact that they consist of a mixture of various alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. When mixing, we can create drinks with a truly unique taste and appearance, in which the dominant flavour is key, but the accompanying flavours round off the experience.\n\nAccording to international rules, a cocktail must not contain more than 6 cl of alcohol or more than five ingredients. The total volume of a long drink must not exceed 25 cl. They can be either non-alcoholic or alcoholic.\n

But where does the alcohol come from?<\/strong><\/h4>\nAccording to legend, there was a Persian king, namely Shah Jamshid, who was passionate about grapes. He amassed a huge quantity of them in his palace and, naturally, some of them were crushed and began to rot.\n\nThe king deemed it poisonous and banished the entire stock to the cellar. The Shah had a concubine, Guln\u00e1r\u00e9, who one day was tormented by a terrible migraine. So much so that she would have preferred suicide to the excruciating headache. So she went down to the cellar, where she drank some of the liquid the king had labelled as poison. Our heroine did not die from it, but instead experienced a numbing, pleasant, warm sensation, and then, in a state of near-ecstasy, she began to dance before the king.\n\nOnce they realised what had happened, the king set about producing the wine. In the Middle East, the wine is known as \u2018zeher-i-k\u00fas\u2019, which means \u2018enchanting poison\u2019.\n

Legends of the Rooster\u2019s Tail<\/strong><\/h4>\nAlcohol was already known in Babylon, Egypt and ancient Greece, and was typically used for religious purposes. As for how this came to be a cocktail, let a few legends \u2013 by no means an exhaustive account \u2013 tell the story for me.\n\nIn the 18th century, cockfights were widespread. The cock that won was the one that killed its opponent, or the one that managed to retain the most torn tail feathers.\n\nAt the end of the contest, the audience drank a toast: they mixed together as many different drinks as there were tail feathers left on the unfortunate, battered but victorious bird. This is where the name \u2018cocktail\u2019 comes from \u2013 meaning \u2018cock\u2019s tail\u2019.\n\nIn America, a pub-keeper\u2019s daughter fell in love, but her father did not consent to the marriage. Shortly afterwards, the innkeeper\u2019s fighting cock vanished without a trace. In his utter despair, the head of the family decided to offer his daughter\u2019s hand in marriage to the honest finder, as the cock was worth more than his daughter.\n\nThe lucky finder turned out to be the original suitor, so the wedding could finally go ahead. The delighted father poured out the pub\u2019s entire stock of drink, much to the delight of the guests.\n\nThe daughter of King Axolotl II of Mexico was called Coctel. In the 19th century, the young lady offered American officers visiting the court a special drink. The soldiers believed that \u2018Coctel\u2019 was the name of the drink they were consuming, rather than that of the princess; from then on, \u2018cocktail\u2019 came to be used as a synonym for flavourful, strong drinks.\n

The initial mixes<\/strong><\/h4>\nThe first recipe book was published in the 17th century by the Destiller\u2019s Company, and in fact contained recipes for concoctions prepared for medicinal purposes. The first definition of a cocktail appeared in the magazine *Balance* in 1806, which described a cocktail as a stimulating mixture of spirits, sugar, water and bitters. The first collection of cocktails in the modern sense was published in 1862.\n

The cocktail\u2019s rise to popularity<\/strong><\/h4>\nProhibition, between 1920 and 1933, gave a significant boost to the popularity of cocktails. The end products of illegal distillation were of poor quality and did not offer much enjoyment to those who consumed them. Other drinks were mixed in with them to make the taste of the alcohol more palatable. As the art of mixology first became widespread in the English-speaking world, English became the accepted technical terminology.\n
\n\nDuring the Prohibition era, many people fell in love with these concoctions, so it was clear that they would endure for future generations. Since then, cocktails have become much more refined. Of course, the aim of using numerous ingredients to mask the undrinkability of a particular component is now a thing of the past. These days \u2013 in the better, higher-quality establishments \u2013 fine spirits are used to create exclusive flavour combinations for guests.\n\n<\/div>\n
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Nowadays, we can find refreshing, mood-lifting mixed drinks almost anywhere; we collectively refer to them as cocktails. However, these marvellous drinks have been with us for a very long time, although there is a difference in purpose between the early experiments and the drinks we now refer to as cocktails.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fine-dining"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3930,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1601\/revisions\/3930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}