Hanky Panky Cocktail

The Hanky Panky Cocktail is a cocktail invented in the early 1900s featuring gin, sweet vermouth, and fernet branca. The perfect mix of sweet and bitter!

Several years ago, my husband started a regular Friday tradition of making me my favorite drink, the Hanky Panky Cocktail. I figure this is more than fair as I have done all the grocery shopping and put dinner on our table all week. (With attention to both vegetarian child and picky eater child.)

He works from home, and sometimes works late. I tried to be patient on Friday nights but as 5pm turned into 6pm, then 7pm, and sometimes 8pm, I would send him a series of more and more desperate texts and gifs to lovingly encourage him to get his butt downstairs and make me a damn cocktail. Yes, I could make it myself, but see above re: grocery shopping and dinner ALL WEEK. 

Since we moved to France, there has been a lot of wine on the table but no cocktails. For one thing, there were no cocktail glasses in our apartment, and, I wasn’t sure I could find the ingredients I needed. But when browsing at the Monoprix the other day I spotted all three of the required bottles! And, I did some prop shopping at Emmaus (the French version of Goodwill) and found a cocktail glass for about one euro. Sold. Friday cocktail night is officially back on chez Pisula! 

I can’t take credit for this recipe, because we learned about it at a seminar run by the Museum of the American Cocktail, based in New Orleans. One of the founders travels frequently to D.C. and holds cocktail seminars every few months. The seminars are great fun—with delicious drinks, of course, but also often a history lesson on where and when a certain cocktail was invented. A seminar on cocktails invented in hotel bars introduced us to the Hanky Panky. Read on for some history...

Who invented the Hanky Panky Cocktail?

The Hanky Panky is credited to Ada Coleman, the first female head bartender at the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London. To date she is one of only two women to hold that position, which she was promoted to in 1903. She held the position for 23 years, serving luminaries including Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, the Prince of Wales, and Mark Twain. The story goes that she loved creating new cocktails, and created one for one of her regulars, a comic actor named Charles Hawtrey. Upon tasting the drink, he exclaimed, “By Jove! This is the real hanky-panky!” And so my favorite cocktail was named.

How do you make a Hanky Panky Cocktail?

Making a Hanky Panky is quite easy. You just combine equal parts sweet vermouth and gin, and add a couple of splashes of Fernet Branca. To begin, grab your ingredients, including an orange.

In a cocktail shaker over ice, combine 1.5 ounces of gin, 1.5 ounces of sweet vermouth, and 2 dashes of Fernet Branca. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Use a vegetable peeler to peel off a twist of orange, and add to your glass. Serve!

What else can you do with Fernet Branca?

Now that you’ve bought a big bottle of Fernet, what can you do with it? Fernet is bitter enough that a little goes a long way (though some people do drink it by itself as a digestif!). Add a bit of Fernet Branca to prosecco or sparkling wine for a champagne cocktail—choose a sparkling wine on the sweeter side for the best balance.  In South America, especially Argentina, Coke with Fernet Branca is a popular drink. In San Francisco, you’ll find bar patrons chasing shots of Fernet with ginger ale. Interestingly, in the U.S., pharmacies sold Fernet during Prohibition because of its purported health benefits. Most of those have been debunked but I'm sure glad Fernet is still around.

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