Pandora

Boxes and Booze

Nov 26

Pandora, as you may know, is a character from Greek mythology. She was the first human woman created by the gods (Hephaestus and Athena). As the story goes, she famously opened a jar filled with spirits. Of course most people recall the story with her opening a box, but originally it was a jar.

A jar filled with spirits.

Why there hasn’t been a cocktail named after her until now appears to be a small Greek tragedy all of its own. Since she was the first Greek woman, I thought of the pink lady cocktail, another prohibition era classic, made with gin, applejack, lemon juice, simple syrup, grenadine and egg white (if you are put off by the egg white see my Egg blog post). But since Pandora is no ordinary lady, I wanted the drink to be specific to her as well. I substituted the sweet grenadine for Campari, the mildly bitter Italian aperitif with the distinctive red color (originally obtained with crushed cochineal beetles which produced the dye carmine – now, alas, obtained from food coloring). The bitter liqueur imparts to the drink the bitter spirits released into the world when Pandora opened the jar. But hope remains – remember? And the Campari, in my humble opinion, makes this classic cocktail shine. It tastes fantastic and gives the drink a sophisticated balance it doesn’t really have with the original recipe.