Singapore Sling

So, who invented the Singapore Sling?

Now, if you believe the good folk at Raffles Hotel in Singapore, their head bartender, Ngiam Tong Boon, invented the Singapore Sling in 1915. It was subsequently enjoyed by celebrities from Noel Coward to Somerset Maugham in the 1920s. But how much does the Singapore Sling really have to do with Raffles?

Let's start with the Raffles version, a recipe presented on cards in the bar, and work back. According to them, Ngiam Tong Boon, their head bartender, invented the Singapore Sling in 1915, and this is his recipe:

30 ml (1 oz) gin
15 ml (1/2 oz) cherry brandy
120 ml (4 oz) pineapple juice
15 ml (1/2 oz) lime juice
7.5 ml (1/4 oz) Cointreau
7.5 ml (1/4 oz) DOM Benedictine
10 ml (1/3 oz) grenadine
A dash of Angostura bitters
Garnish with a slice of pineapple and cherry.

This is, surely, Ngiam Tong Boon's original recipe, right? The one he invented, locked up in a chest and kept closely guarded, as with all the best secret recipe stories?

Well, umm, no. It's based on a recipe scrawled on the back of a till receipt by a *customer* in 1936 who asked how the drink was made (at a time, intriguingly, when a Singapore Sling fizzy pop was circulating in the US). And 1936 was three years after Raffles hotel went under new management and eighteen years after Boon died.

Historical Recipes

As it happens, there are quite a few published recipes for the Singapore Sling. A Sling is one of the earliest types of cocktail, and typically appears as a mix of citrus, sugar, spirit and water, later soda water.

So your entry level Gin Sling would be: lemon, sugar, gin and soda water, over ice. No pineapple juice! And, if you take a look at other cocktails with fruit juice from around this time, such as the Bronx (1906), you'll find juice is a highlight rather than an all-embracing dilutant.

Now, the first recipes that appear for the Singapore Sling in old cocktail books – Robert Vermeire (1922), Harry Craddock (1930), Charles H. Baker (1939) and Trader Vic (1948) – all feature gin, cherry brandy and soda. The good ones include lemon, most include Bénédictine, and not one has even a drop of pineapple juice.

So it looks a bit as though the original Singapore Sling is, essentially, a gin sling with a hit of cherry brandy, a pink, fizzy, transparent drink. Not one source mentions who invented it, so let's track back a bit further.

Jason Wilson of the Washington Post discussed these issues in a piece back in February. He came to the conclusion that the Singapore Sling we know today is a conflation and probable descendant of the Straits Sling (which includes kirschwasser—dry cherry brandy—Bénédictine, and bitters, "Straits" being a local name for Singapore), with the mysterious inclusion of pineapple juice happening somewhere during or after the 1970s.

"Cocktails and How to Mix Them," Robert Vermeire, 1922

Straits Sling
(*)This well-known Singapore drink, thoroughly ice and shaken, contains :
2 dashes of Orange Bitters,
2 dashes of Angostura Bitters,
The juice of half a lemon
1/8 gill of Bénédictine.
1/8 gill of Dry Cherry Brandy
1/2 gill of Gin.
Pour into a tumbler and fill up with cold soda water.

"Savoy Cocktail Book," by Harry Craddock, 1930

The Savoy Cocktail Book had both a Straits Sling and a Singapore Sling. The Singapore version is 1 ounce of cherry brandy, ½ ounce dry gin, and the juice of ¼ of a lemon, shaken, strained into a "medium" glass, topped with soda water and a lump of ice. The Straits Sling on the other hand is for six people, and has 8 ounces of gin, 2 ounces each of Benedictine and cherry brandy, the juice of 2 lemons, and a teaspoon each of orange and Angostura bitters.

Singapore Sling
The Juice of 1/4 lemon
1/4 Dry Gin
1/2 Cherry Brandy
Shake well and strain into medium size glass, and fill with soda water. Add 1 lump of ice.

Both Frank Meier's "The Artistry of Mixing Drinks" (1936) and the "Café Royal Cocktail Book" (1937) mimic this more minimalist Singapore Sling: Meier calls for a half-glass (theoretically a bit more than an ounce) of gin and cherry brandy, with the juice of half a lemon and water (let's call it 2 ounces) to fill a tumbler with "three or four pieces of ice" in it. The Café Royal uses ½ gin (say 2 ounces), ¼ each cherry brandy and Benedictine (1 ounce), and the juice of half a lime, shaken and poured unstrained into a tumbler, then topped with what might be 1.5 ounces of soda water.

Charles Baker, 1939, "Jigger, Beaker and Glass"

Finally, in his 1939 classic "Jigger, Beaker and Glass", Charles H. Baker, Jr. declares that the original recipe for the Singapore Sling is one third each gin, cherry brandy and Benedictine shaken or stirred with a few lumps of ice and filled with soda water, then garnished with a spiral of lime, but that he prefers a drier version which is a 2:1:1 ratio.

This Baker recipe is the most stripped down version of the Singapore Sling, and he claims it is the original recipe, which he first encountered in 1926. While technically this is still a gin sling, Professor Thomas might have recognized it as an "improved" or "fancy" gin sling, where the plain white sugar was replaced by flavored liqueurs, albeit in much larger amounts that is typical. Sadly, this version is heavy and overly sweet, not tropical or refreshing. But it may be as close as one can get to what was first served at the Raffles.

The original formula is 1/3 each of dry gin, cherry brandy and Benedictine; shake it for a moment, or stir in a barglass, with 2 fairly large lumps of ice to chill. Turn into a small 10 oz highball glass with one lump of ice left in and fill up to individual taste with chilled club soda. Garnish with the spiral peel of 1 green lime. In other ports in the Orient drinkers often use C & C ginger ale instead of soda, or even stone bottle ginger beer.
Our own final improved formula calls for 2 parts dry or Tom gin, to 1 part cherry brandy and 1 part Benedictine. This is dryer, not too sweet. We also use a trifle more ice in the glass than the Raffles technique. One lump melts too quickly where we live among the coconut palms!

"Trader Vic Bartender's Guide," by Trader Vic, 1948

Raffles Hotel Sling
1 oz. Dry Gin.
1 oz. Cherry Brandy.
1 oz. Benedictine.
Shake w/cracked ice, strain into glass containing several lumps of ice; fill with chilled club soda and garnish with lime peel spiral.

Singapore Sling 1.

1 1/2 oz Dry Gin.
1/2 oz Cherry Brandy.
1/2 oz Lemon Juice.
1/2 Lime.
1 tsp Grenadine.
1/4 oz Sloe Gin.
1/2 oz Creme de Cassis.
Squeeze lime and drop into 12 oz glass with cracked ice; add rest of ingredients and stir well; fill rest of glass with seltzer

Singapore Sling 2

Juice 1/2 lemon
1 Dash Benedictine
3/4 oz Cherry Brandy
2 oz Dry Gin

Stir in 12 oz glass with cracked ice; decorate with slice of orange and sprig of mint; fill with seltzer and serve with straws

Straits Sling (6 people)

Place in a shaker 4 glasses of gin, 1 glass of Benedictine, 1 glass of Cherry Brandy, the juice of 2 Lemons, a teaspoonful of Angostura Bitters and one of Orange Bitters. Shake sufficiently and serve in large glasses, filling up with Soda Water.

From David Woodrich:

"For starters, the earliest reference to a sling is from 1897, almost 20 years before the Raffles supposedly created it. With a 1903 reference to "pink slings for pale people," we can begin to lay to rest the common argument that the reference to "dry cherry brandy" in Robert Vermiere's 1922 Cocktails: How to Mix Them, the drink's first appearance in a cocktail book, means that it should be made with a clear kirschwasser rather than a red liqueur such as Cherry Heering. Add the fact that the only cherry brandies that turn up in local liquor advertisements are the red Bols cherry brandy or the aforementioned Heering (at the time, Bols had a dry version of its regular cherry brandy, which was its standard version blended with Cognac).

As to the other ingredients, the newspapers demonstrate that it was never completely cut and dried: the drink was always red, but occasionally that came from a float of red wine rather than cherry brandy. The Bénédictine was optional, but common. Nonetheless, a 1913 item from the Singapore Weekly Sun gives us a pretty good baseline when it notes that you can get around the Singapore Cricket Club's refusal to make the drink (they thought it was vulgar) by ordering "one cherry brandy, one Domb [i.e., D.O.M. Bénédictine], one gin, one lime juice, some ice and water, [and] a few dashes of bitters," whereupon you might enjoy "a really decent Sling." Factor in that a standard measure was one ounce of spirit, and we're getting somewhere."

This doesn't only closely match the recipe from Vermeire's 1922 cocktail book, but fits Noel Coward's account of drinking "gin slings" at Raffles. Because a fizzy long drink with gin in it is, fundamentally, a sling, where as something with four whole ounces of pineapple juice ain't.

And, obviously, 1913 is two full years before Ngiam Tong Boon invented his cocktail, according to Raffles.

But smarter bars in Singapore now also serve the earlier “original” Singapore Sling, most often under the name “Straits Sling”.

And, if you’re after something long, pink, but rather more refreshing than the pineapple slop, this is, I reckon, the way to go.

As to who invented the earliest Singapore Sling? That, I’m afraid, remains lost in the mists of time.

A final word on the subject comes in an article in the Straits Times from July 14th, 1969. Chew Ah Mit, the bartender at the Selangor Club was due to retire, having worked behind the bar there since 1908. He fondly remembered the gin slings that by his retirement were out of fashion as "a little gin, a dash of cherry brandy, a drop of liqueur, a splash of DOM, and some lemon" – a simple drink for a simpler time.