Cosmopolitan

Toby Cecchini at The Odeon, New York, 1988, based on an earlier version created by Cheryl Cook in Miami in the mid-1980s using Absolut Citron (then newly released). Cecchini refined Cook's recipe, replacing Rose's lime with fresh lime and adjusting the proportions. Dale DeGroff popularised it at The Rainbow Room, and Sex and the City (1998–2004) made it culturally omnipresent.

The Cosmopolitan — citrus vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and fresh lime — is the cocktail that defined the 1990s and was unfairly maligned by the decade that followed. Created by Toby Cecchini at The Odeon in New York in 1988, it was brought to global fame by Sex and the City and subsequently dismissed as a mainstream trend. Its rehabilitation has been swift: the Cosmopolitan, made correctly with quality ingredients, is a precise, pink, citrus-forward cocktail with real elegance. The cranberry juice is a colour and tartness agent, not the dominant flavour — the Cosmo is fundamentally a citrus sour dressed in pink, and that makes it very good.

FOOD PAIRING: The Cosmopolitan's citrus-berry-light sweetness pairs with light fare, brunch, and seafood. Provenance 1000 pairings: smoked salmon with creme fraiche blinis (cranberry tartness cuts the fat), shrimp cocktail (citrus and shrimp harmony), goat cheese and fig crostini (tartness mirrors chevre's tang), oysters on the half shell (light citrus-berry lifts the brine), and lemon tart.