A Brandy Alexander For Your Holidays

It's decadent, delightful, kitschy, and comforting, just like the season.

Happy Friday, and happy holidays. 

For the season, there are few better drinks than the Brandy Alexander. 

It’s an exceptionally simple cocktail, just three ingredients — brandy, creme de cacao, and heavy cream — shaken and strained into a glass, with a bit of nutmeg dusted on top. (You might add a fourth ingredient, depending on whose side you take in a minor household dispute. But we’ll get to that in a moment.)

Unless you’re already an Alexander cultist, you’ll probably have to pick up a bottle of creme de cacao, which might linger on your bar cart a little bit longer than is ideal. But nevermind this imposition. Around this time of year, all houseguests, even the ones you otherwise don’t quite to do with, should be welcome. 

The Brandy Alexander drinks something like a flip but without all the rigamarole involved in using an egg. Indeed, among its virtues is that, it takes practically not time at all to make. 

It’s also rich and decadent, thanks to the inclusion of heavy cream. That easy-drinking decadence has sometimes earned the cocktail a reputation as a drink for lightweights who don’t normally care for boozy fair, but that’s mainly a testament to how deeply enjoyable it is. Made well, it’s creamy, sweet, soft, and luxuriously pleasant—yet also refined. 

You can see the drink’s character on display ina somewhat famous bit in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, in which the gadfly Anthony Blanche orders not one Brandy Alexander¹, but four: 

At the George bar he ordered ‘Four Alexandra [sic] cocktails please,’ ranged them before him with a loud “Yum-yum’ which drew every eye, outraged, upon him. ‘I expect you would prefer sherry, but, my dear Charles, you are not going to have sherry. Isn’t this a delicious concoction? You don’t like it? Then, I will drink it for you. One, two, three, four, down the red lane they go. How the students stare!’…

I read Brideshead for the first time this year, after doing a bit of internet scouring about the Brandy Alexander and coming across the above passage. 

Part of what struck me about the book was its sense of gustatory passion and exuberance. Throughout the novel people are eating and drinking—and drinking, and drinking, and drinking. (And, well, drinking.) There is pleasure, and there is excess, and sometimes, as in the scene with the Brandy Alexanders, there is a bit of both. 

Waugh himself later commented on this particular aspect of the book’s ravenous character. In the preface, he notes that it was written after he sustained a minor parachuting injury while fighting in World War II, letting him out of duty for a bit. “It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster…” he wrote, “and in consequence, the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendors of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language, which now with a full stomach I find distasteful.” He confesses to eventually modifying some passages, but not too much, for he understood that the book’s unchecked enthusiasms were part of its appeal. 

That same sensibility, I think, also characterizes the appeal of the Brandy Alexander, especially when the holidays arrive. The drink borders on the silly and the kitschy. But so do many holiday celebrations and traditions. And yet, we enjoy them—well, most of them, anyway—for their sweetness, for their soft and easy comforts, for their simplicity and sincerity. 

Sure, they’re a little over the top; one wouldn’t want to celebrate like this all year round. But at the right time, in the right proportion, they’re delights. That goes for the Alexander too. 

Alexander the Great

The origins of the Alexander cocktail are a matter of dispute, but David Wondrich’s entry in the Oxford Companion to Cocktails and Spirits traces its likely beginnings to Rector’s, a New York lobster restaurant in the early 1900s. The drink then circulated via Hugo Ensslin’s 1916 cocktail guide Recipes for Mixed Drinks, where it also appeared under the name the Panama. 

Early versions of the Alexander were made with gin, creme de cacao, and cream, but brandy eventually became a common substitute for the gin. By the 1940s, it could be found under both the Alexander and Panama monikers in David Embury’s Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, which specifies four parts gin or brandy to one part cream and one part creme de cacao. 

Embury, ever the evangelist for strong, dry cocktails grumbles that the drink “can be consumed with reasonable safety before a meal, although why anyone should take it if dry cocktails are available, I wouldn’t know.” 

To be fair, I probably wouldn’t drink a Brandy Alexander before dinner either. Even more than eggnog, it’s a pure dessert drink, a substitute for something like crème brûlée or tiramisù. A Brandy Alexander goes quite nicely with a cookie, serving a similar function to a dollop of whipped cream. 

In fact, you can think of this cocktail as—kind of, sort of, not quite—a boozy whipped cream. If you have ever made whipped cream before, you know that it’s just heavy cream that’s, er…been whipped or whisked into foamy peaks. You can mix a little bit of booze (or spices, or whatever) into the cream and keep the same texture while modifying the flavor. 

A Brandy Alexander just takes that idea and turns it up to 11. It mixes a whole lot of booze into the cream, and then agitates it via shaking with ice rather than whisking. The result is not as soft and foamy as whipped cream, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s a creamy, boozy liquid, made for sipping.

He’s My Brandy Alexander, Always Gets Me Into Trouble

The biggest question when making a Brandy Alexander is what proportions or ratio to use. 

As I noted, Embury’s 1940s guide calls for a 4:1:1 (brandy:cream:creme de cacao) mix. 

As it happens, I also have a vintage copy of the Time Life Foods of the World guide to wines and spirits published in 1968. It calls for 4 parts brandy, 2 parts creme de cacao, and 1 part heavy cream, making for a slightly boozier, less creamy drink. 

Today’s standard, and my own preferred recipe, goes in the other direction, with a 3:2:2 (brandy:cream:creme de cacao) ratio, making for a creamier concoction overall. 

This ratio makes the drink richer and heavier as well, but it emphasizes the cocktail’s unique element, the cream, making it more of what it is. Unlike Anthony Marche, you’ll only want to drink one of these in an evening — but that one will be extra creamy and delicious. 

Bitters and Spice and Everything Nice

Once you have ingredients and the ratio, the process of making the drink is fairly straightforward. Still, as I mentioned earlier, there is something of a divide in my own house as to the inclusion of a fourth ingredient. 

That ingredient is a single dash of Angostura Aromatic bitters. 

When I initially started making Brandy Alexanders, I thought: If you can add spices to whip cream or eggnog, why can’t you add a bit of spice to a Brandy Alexander? A dash of Angostura Aromatic bitters is a quick and easy way to add notes of clove, cinnamon, and allspice to a drink. I find it adds a pleasantly warming winter-spice element to the mix. 

My wife, however, disagrees.² A dash of bitters doesn’t make the cocktail undrinkable, in her view. But the addition makes the drink a little too boisterous, too in-your-face. She prefers the simplicity and refinement of the original three-ingredient spec.

I’ll print the recipe with the dash of bitters listed as optional. Take whichever side of this dispute you like — the Brandy Alexander is delicious, decadent, and comforting either way. Happy holidays, readers.

Brandy Alexander

• 1 dash Angostura Aromatic bitters (optional)

• 1 ounce heavy cream

• 1 ounce creme de cacao, preferably Tempus Fugit

• 1 ½ ounce aged American brandy or cognac (see below for brand/bottle recommendations)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker. 

2. Add ice, then shake hard for 12-15 seconds. 

3. Strain into a coupe or cocktail glass. 

4. Garnish with grated nutmeg. 

Which Brandy Should You Use?

For the brandy, you won’t go wrong with E&J XO or VSOP (which I also recommend for both this year’s eggnog and the Thanksgiving Sour.) At less than $15 a bottle, it’s quite affordable, and although it’s not particularly complex, the strong vanilla note works quite well in this cocktail. 

For something more layered, I strongly recommend Pierre Ferrand 1840, an incredibly versatile bottle of cognac with layers of ripe fruit and subtle spices. At $45 or so for a bottle, it’s more expensive, but it’s very much an improvement in this and other brandy/cognac cocktails. 

Torres 15 is also a strong choice around the same price point. It’s smoother, darker, and less lively than the 1840, but it is especially excellent when paired with baked goods. 

Large Dog Season

1. This bit also appears in the 1981 miniseries adaptation of the novel, which I confess I have not seen.

2. She’s probably right. She usually is! But I’m stubborn.