There’s no better pandemic cocktail pairing than this one: Sipping a Singapore Sling while streaming “Crazy Rich Asians” at home.
The famous cocktail was invented at Singapore’s historic Raffles Hotel around 1915. Bartender Ngiam Tong Boon thought a fruity, pink gin-based drink might appeal to the hotel’s fashionable female clientele, who were not supposed to be seen drinking spirits in public. The mixture of gin, citrus, ice, soda water and other ingredients soon became the hotel’s signature cocktail.
It’s the “other ingredients” that are subject to debate. No one wrote the recipe down until the 1930s and by then, variations abounded. Even the Raffles hotel staff says that their version — which adds pineapple juice, cherry brandy, Cointreau, Bénédictine, grenadine and bitters — may not be the original.
So for one of our pandemic-era, stay-home date nights, we paired the splashy Singapore-set rom-com with the Raffles cocktail and some tasty bites. We tried the hotel’s cocktail recipe first — the recipe is printed in the hotel’s Long Bar menu. The drink is sweet, fruity and vividly pink, thanks to the grenadine. Then we tweaked the ratios, dialing back the pineapple, increasing the lime and swapping simple syrup for the grenadine to make a brighter, tarter (and less pink) version that pairs perfectly with chicken satays, flaky scallion pancakes and a glitzy rom-com set on the other side of the world.
Raffle’s Singapore Sling
Makes 1 cocktail
Ingredients
30 ml (1 ounce) gin
15 ml (½ ounce) Cherry Heering
7.5 ml (¼ ounce) Dom Benedictine
7.5 ml (¼ ounce) Cointreau
120 ml (4 ounces) unsweetened pineapple juice
15 ml (½ ounce) fresh lime juice
10 ml (1/3 ounce) grenadine
Dash of Angostura Bitters
Garnish: pineapple slice, cherry
Directions
Shake the ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker until the container is cold, about 30 seconds. Strain the cocktail into a tall glass filled with ice. Garnish with a pineapple slice and a cherry.
— Raffles Hotel Singapore
Variation on the Singapore Sling
Makes 1 cocktail
Ingredients
1.5 ounce gin
½ ounce Maraschino liqueur
1/3 ounce Dom Benedictine
1/3 ounce Cointreau
3 ounces unsweetened pineapple juice
1½ ounces fresh lime juice
½ ounce simple syrup
Dash of Angostura Bitters
Directions
Shake the ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker until the container is cold, about 30 seconds. Strain the cocktail into a tall glass filled with ice.
— Courtesy Cayford Burrell
