The Tom Collins is a Collins cocktail made from gin, lemon juice, sugar, and carbonated water. An August 1891 article from the British weekly magazine Punch disparaging British physician Sir Morell Mackenzie noting in August 1891 that the title of the song actually was “Jim Collins” and that Mackenzie otherwise inaccurately quoted and characterized the song. The earliest publication of any Collins, as well as any Fizz recipe, are both located in the same book, Harry Johnson’s 1882 New and Improved Bartender’s Manual or How to Mix Drinks of the Present Style. The book includes a Tom Collins calling for Old Tom and jerry mix gin and a John Collins calling for Holland Gin, most likely what is known as Genièvre.
Cocktail historian David Wondrich stated that there are several other earlier mentions of this version of the drink and that it does bear a striking resemblance to the gin punches served at London clubs like the Garrick in the first half of the 19th century. Clearly unaware of the drinks actual origins, in August 1891, British physician Sir Morell Mackenzie wrote an article in the influential 19th century magazine Fortnightly Review claiming that England was the originating country for the Tom Collins cocktail and a person named John Collins was its creator. Confusion over the cocktail’s origins continued as American writer Charles Montgomery Skinner noted in 1898 that the Tom Collins had made its way to the “American Bars” in England, France, and Germany, where the American invention stimulated curiosity in Europe and served as a reflection of American art. As time passed, interest in the Tom Collins diminished and its origins became lost. Early on during the 1920s Prohibition in the United States, the American journalist and student of American English H.
But the essentially American character of is obvious, despite the fact that a number have gone over into English. The English, in naming their drinks, commonly display a far more limited imagination. For all the young gentlemen frequenters there. Drinks historian David Wondrich has speculated that the original recipe that was introduced to New York in the 1850s would have been very similar to the gin punches that are known to have been served at fashionable London clubs such as the Garrick during the first half of the 19th century. The specific call for Old Tom gin in the 1869 recipe is a likely cause for the subsequent name change to “Tom Collins” in Jerry Thomas’s 1876 recipe. Earlier versions of the gin punch are likely to have used Hollands instead.
In 1874, people in New York, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in the United States would start a conversation with “Have you seen Tom Collins? The first published Tom Collins recipe appears to have been in Harry Johnson’s 1882 book, New and Improved Bartender’s Manual or How to Mix Drinks of the Present Style. This book contains a recipe for two Collins drinks, the John Collins and the Tom Collins. Use an extra large bar glass.
Attention must be paid not to let the foam of the soda water spread over the glass. In the 1884 book, The Modern Bartender’s Guide by O. Byron there is a drink called a “John Collins’ Gin” where he calls simply for gin with no specifications of which gin, lemon juice, sugar, and filled with soda. That book also has a “Tom Collins’ Brandy”, which consists of brandy, lemon juice, gum syrup and Maraschino liqueur, and filled with soda water built in the glass over ice. In another 1884 book, Scientific Barkeeping by E.
Co, you can also find a John Collins and a Tom Collins, with the John Collins calling for Holland Gin and the Tom Collins calling for Whiskey. There is a recipe for the Tom Collins in the 1887 posthumous edition of Jerry Thomas’ Bar-Tender’s Guide. Take 5 or 6 dashes of gum syrup. Shake up well and strain into a large bar-glass.
Fill up the glass with plain soda water and drink while it is lively. This was distinguished from the Gin Fizz cocktail in that the 3 dashes of lemon juice in the Gin Fizz was “fizzed” with carbonated water to essentially form a “Gin and Sodawater” whereas the considerably more “juice of a small lemon” in the Tom Collins essentially formed a “Gin and Sparkling Lemonade” when sweetened with the gum syrup. By 1878, the Tom Collins was being served in the bar rooms of New York City and elsewhere. Identified as among ‘the favorite drinks which are in demand everywhere’ in an advertisement for the 1878 edition of The Modern Bartender’s Guide by O. Byron, both Tom Collins gin and whiskey and Tom Collins brandy were considered fancy drinks.