In this column (one of my favorites), Manny from the SDSAB explains why James Bond wanted a Martini “shaken, not stirred.” If you’ve not time to read the column, Manny maintains that a vodka martini is best appreciated very cold (specifically, “a vodka martini that is not ice-cold tastes like lighter fluid”), and shaking the ingredients is a more efficient way to achieve this chill.
In this piece, however, three doctors from Nottingham University hospitals argue that vodka martinis should be stirred, not shaken, though this distilled version from ABC does not elaborate on why. These esteemed physicians conclude that Bond was an alcoholic, and that his preference was some sort of evidence of this.
Granted, the ABC story is only a gloss, and from context (the doctors credit Bond with absurdly high rates of alcohol consumption) the entire thing could be a colossal leg pull. Still, this does raise an interesting question: is the conventional vodka martini supposed to be shaken or stirred? Both Manny and the trio of healers from the land of Robin Hood seem equally steadfast in their assertions. What is the straight dope?
One question: why are we supposed to believe a pediatric intensive care specialist about how drinks are supposed to be made? If he’s seeing alcholics in his ward, he’s got bigger issues.
Second point: that article does state
Tongue-in-cheek edition - so it does sound a bit of a lark.
Item C: Manny provides more explanation about the difference between a martini and a* vodka martini*, and why one might shake a drink versus stir one, and why martini drinkers would prefer stirring - the air from shaking mixes in the gin and alters the flavor. Excuse me, “bruises the gin”.
Still, I’m no alcoholic … beverage expert, so anyone got any good cites?
I used to drink martinis occasionally [my stupid bar trick was to be able to blind identify the more common gins found in say 1982 by taste.]
One evening a bunch of us sat down in the bar while waiting for the waitstaff to finish a banquet room reset and tried both shaken and stirred martinis, along with different gin:vermouth ratios.
Honestly, there is no real difference between shaken and stirred IMHO. You only really start getting differences when you start changing the gins, vermouths and the porportions. Well, and also adding olive pickle to the martini, olives or onions, and various twists.
A Fictional source, Jed Bartlet from The West Wing, once offered this fragment as the audience joined a conversation already in progress:
He was saying that shaking chips the ice, causing small fragments with lots of surface area which melt faster when compared to ice cubes, and then says “He’s ordering a watered-down drink.”
Now, another effect of that faster melting might be faster cooling, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Jed Bartlett thinking James Bond’s signature drink was something only an idiot would order.
Bond favors vodka martinis, and nobody worries about bruising vodka.
For my part, I find a bartender I trust and let him do his job. There’s something a little douche-y about high-maintenance martinis. A recent article about Judge Robert Bork had him sending his martini back because there were olives (Here’s his description). “There is in this matter, as on every serious subject, a number of heresies. In the first place, a drink made with vodka is not a martini. A martini means gin. Second, olives are to be eschewed, except by people who think a martini is a type of salad.”
Just when I thought I couldn’t respect him any less.
According to Wikipedia, Fleming’s bartender in real life (Hans Schröder) made his martinis that way. Absent any culinary Rosetta Stone on the subject, my first assumption is that Bond is emulating an aspect of Fleming’s own preferences this way.
Personal anecdote: when I was an undergrad, my freshman lit professor assigned James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” about a jazz pianist. It concludes with this passage:
Some of the students questioned the phrase “cup of trembling,” as well as the unusual composition of the drink. The former question was answered rather quickly by the next class period with a nod to Cruden’s Concordance (this being before the days of searchable text), but the inclusion of Scotch and milk found itself more perplexing. As I looked 21 at the time, I did a fair amount of field research on the question, and the professor and I concluded that it had something to do with mixing the bitter and the pure, as well as the appearance that the drinker may well just be drinking milk. Later that year, Clint Eastwood’s film biography of Charlie Parker (Bird) came out, and both the professor and I had what was probably the definitive answer: Scotch and milk was (ostensibly) Charlie Parker’s drink, and Sonny was drinking it (along with shooting heroin) in emulation of his hero. I imagine Fleming had something similiar in mind, though the Bartlett hypothesis - that he is intentionally weakening his drinks - may have some validity as well.
Of course, after years of ordering Scotch and milk to the bewilderment of all but the most grizzled bartenders, I discovered that it was the drink of grizzled alcoholics who could only tolerate liquor if cushioned by dairy. I had been sending quite the message, it seems.
Hasn’t a lot to do with the Bond thing, honestly, but my understanding of the shaking vs. stirring was that it was a matter of presentation: shaking white liquors doesn’t “bruise” them :rolleyes:, but it does make them rather cloudy. Stir it and it looks suitably elegant while sloshing out over the rim of your poorly designed conical cocktail glass.
Are you sure? If the mixture in the shaker is more dilute, then the mixture in the glass will be also. The only conserved quantity is the volume of the glass.
[QUOTE=StusBlues]
According to Wikipedia, Fleming’s bartender in real life (Hans Schröder) made his martinis that way. Absent any culinary Rosetta Stone on the subject, my first assumption is that Bond is emulating an aspect of Fleming’s own preferences this way.
[/QUOTE]
That’s the likely explanation, I was just wondering if there was more to go on in Fleming’s choice. It could be he thought it seemed stylish, or it could be that’s the way he preferred them. Or it could be he thought Bond a brute masquerading as a gent, and likes his martini the brutish way or the way he expects a gent to like it. Or really any of a number of explanations. That wikipedia page is interesting.