Hanky Panky
Gin and sweet vermouth in equal measure, with a dash of Fernet-Branca.
Serving
Drink spec — per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count — that is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Vermouth is wine-based, and wine may be clarified with isinglass, made from fish, or with gelatine. Neither is a declarable allergen and neither has to appear on a label, so whether a particular bottle is vegan is a question about that producer rather than about vermouth.
Honey is not listed among the botanicals the producer publicises, but the producer told the vegan-tracking site Barnivore by email in August 2021 that the formula contains honey in a very low proportion, which is enough to withhold the vegan label. Honey is inside the vegetarian line, so that label stands.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
45 ml London dry gin
45 ml sweet vermouth
1.8 ml Fernet-BrancaProprietary
1 orange (140 g)
- 45 ml London dry gin
- 45 ml sweet vermouth
- 1.8 ml Fernet-BrancaProprietary
- 1 orange (140 g)
- ~37 ml water
Glass
Vessel
129 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 180 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
4 steps · 1m 35sChill a coupe.
Combine the 45 ml London dry gin, the 45 ml sweet vermouth and the 1.8 ml Fernet-Branca in a mixing glass filled with cubed ice.
The Fernet-Branca is measured by the dash rather than poured like the gin and vermouth, because the herbal bitterness it carries would overwhelm the drink at anything close to a full measure.
Stir for 25s, until the outside of the glass is frosted, and strain into the chilled coupe.
Cut a 4 cm swathe of orange peel, hold it skin-outwards over the surface and squeeze so the oil lands on the drink. Rub it around the rim and drop it in.
Common pitfallSweet vermouth is close to half this drink by volume, more than in most stirred cocktails, so a bottle that has oxidised on the shelf ruins it faster and more obviously than it would elsewhere.
Keeping and make-ahead
Batched ahead, this keeps sealed and cold. The water line the engine adds is the dilution figure from the spec panel — it is not a rule of thumb.
About
Credited to the Savoy's head bartender, built for one of her most demanding regulars, and possibly the first printed cocktail to treat Fernet-Branca as a modifier rather than a medicine.
The drink is credited to Ada Coleman, who ran the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London from 1903 1. In her own account, given in a 1925 newspaper interview, the actor Charles Hawtrey would come in tired and ask for "something with a bit of punch in it"; she worked on the recipe until she had one, and Hawtrey's verdict on tasting it — "that is the real hanky-panky" — gave it its name 2. Harry Craddock printed the recipe in The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, some years after Coleman herself had left the bar 2.
The drink is built as a sweet martini — equal parts gin and sweet vermouth - carried by a dash of Fernet-Branca, and it is sometimes credited as the earliest printed cocktail recipe to use Fernet as a modifier, at a time when the amaro was thought of as a medicine-cabinet bottle rather than a bar one 2. That reputation rests on print survival rather than on any claim to have been first to pour it that way, and it is worth stating with the same hedge the record itself carries.
The gin-and-sweet-vermouth base puts the drink in the same general shape as the Martinez and the early Martini, without descending from either by name: "sweet martini" was a generic description for a whole style of drink in this period, not a specific recipe Coleman is known to have been adapting 3.
- 1Hanky Panky Cocktail Recipepunchdrink.com
- 2Hanky panky (cocktail)en.wikipedia.org
- 3Hanky Pankydiffordsguide.com