My simple recipe for a single serving (nice and strong) Gin and Tonic.

To a glass of ice add:

stir, repeat etc.

Gin* and Tonic has to be served with ice, and lime or lemon as it really enhances the taste.

To guard against running out of lime or lemon, and to lend a nice touch to the presentation of the drink, use this trick.

You will need:

Cut the fruit into small chunks and put into the ice cube trays before filling with water.Once filled leave in the freezer as usual.

The resulting fruity ice cubes are perfect for Gin and Tonic, and are also handy when you are too pissed or stoned to bother with cutting up lemons, and go lovely in an ice cold coke.

*Bombay Sapphire if possible.

Common folklore has it that the G&T was created by Brits stationed in India; folks drinking tonic water found the stuff unpleasant tasting so gin was added to make it more palatable. Sounds backwards to me, but I've never been a big fan of the stuff (note 25 Mar 04: I love gin, now).

Tonic water today, however, is much different than the tonic water one would drink for symptomatic malaria treatmeant. Modern tonic water contains less than 20 milligrams of quinine per six ounces (source: the Straight Dope) and effective malaria treatment today usually consists of half a gram or a gram of quinine (taken in tablets over the course of the day. As quinine is quite bitter, it's a little more understandable why one would be inclined to try to kill the taste somewhat.

I am a huge fan of Gin and Tonics, especially on warm days. I am not particular about the ingredients, but while I enjoy the pretention factor of a Bombay Sapphire, I must say that Plymouth Gin is quite tasty, cheap, and boasts of being 'the oldest Gin in America' or some such - it is originally a mid-18th century English import. More power to it.

My value-added to this node (for what it's worth) is the following, and it's not original at all; I picked it up from some magazine recipe and cannot for the life of me remember where. It requires preparation in advance, but improves a gin and tonic immeasurably. This is it, and it's very simple:

...place tonic water in your ice trays, freeze it, and use that for your ice cubes in your drink.

That's it. The reason is that icemelt water will, in fact, cause a startlingly harsh change in the taste of both gin and tonic water. Using tonic water for the ice cube material eliminates this change in your drink.

Try it. I bet you like it.

Thanks to The Debutante for a correction re: Plymouth Gin. Lucky woman had a bottle, whereas I didn't while writing. Must fix that.

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