Halloween cocktails that don’t need food colouring

Halloween has filled up with neon-green cocktails and glasses full of gummy eyeballs. They look good in a photo and rarely in the mouth. There is another way: the classic cocktail canon is full of drinks with horror-film names, and some have a history worth telling as you pour. Here are five, all with their recipe in this collection.

Corpse Reviver No. 2: the drink that raises the dead

In the nineteenth century, “corpse revivers” were a family of drinks supposed to bring anyone back to life after a long night. Number 2 is the only one to survive to the present, and Harry Craddock fixed it in The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930: gin, orange liqueur, Lillet and lemon in equal parts, with a dash of absinthe. Craddock added a warning: four in quick succession will send the corpse right back where it was.

The recipe: Corpse Reviver No. 2.

El Diablo

Tequila, crème de cassis, lime and ginger beer. Trader Vic, one of the fathers of tiki, published it in 1946 in his book of drinks under the name Mexican El Diablo. The blackcurrant gives it a deep purple that needs no help, and the ginger the bite the name demands.

The recipe: El Diablo.

Vampiro

The Mexican drink with the most character: tequila, grapefruit soda and sangrita, with a salt-and-chilli rim. The sangrita goes in last and sinks slowly, staining the glass a deep red. It is salty, spicy, and the only one on this list whose name needs no explanation.

The recipe: Vampiro.

Bloody Mary

Its origin has been disputed for almost a century. Fernand Petiot claimed he invented it in 1921 at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, with just vodka and tomato, and added the spices in 1934 at the St. Regis hotel in New York; the actor George Jessel maintained it had been his idea. The name has several explanations and none is documented. The most popular links it to Mary I of England.

The recipe: Bloody Mary.

Dark ’n’ Stormy

Dark rum and ginger beer, with the rum floating on top like a storm cloud. It is Bermuda’s unofficial drink, and legend says a sailor named it by comparing its colour to the clouds before a gale; there is no way to prove it. What is documented is that it is a registered trademark: the Bermudian distiller Gosling’s registered it there in 1980, and according to the brand, to carry the name it must be made with their rum.

The recipe: Dark ’n’ Stormy.

How to add atmosphere without ruining them

The Halloween temptation is to blacken the drink with activated charcoal. Better not. Activated charcoal holds on to oral medication in the stomach and can make it less effective, birth control pills included, and New York City has banned it in food since 2018. There are safer ways to set the mood:

• Smoke the glass with a wood chip before serving. We explain how in how to smoke a cocktail.
• Rim the glass with black salt, or with sugar mixed with cocoa.
• Play with the glassware: dark glasses or clay cups change the look of any drink without touching the recipe.
• Flame an orange peel over the glass: it leaves a toasted aroma that suits the night.

None of these five needs a costume. Telling their story as you serve them is enough.