History of the Bee’s Knees Cocktail
Who Invented the Bee’s Knees Cocktail and What’s the Recipe?
History of the Bee’s Knees Cocktail
The Bee’s Knees is one of those cocktails whose history we don’t know for sure. One story says that it was invented by Frank Meier, who was born in Austria but worked in Paris. He was the first head bartender at the Café Parisian at the Ritz Hotel, when it opened in 1921. Meier came up with many cocktails, one of which was this simple combination of gin, lemon juice, and honey syrup (see recipe below).
The Unsinkable Titanic Cocktail
Another version of the Bee’s Knees’ history credits someone else for the invention, the woman who has gone down in history as ‘the unsinkable Molly Brown’. She got the nickname as she was one of the 712 people who survived the Titanic disaster in 1912.
Her real name was Margaret Tobin Brown and she was the wealthy widow of a gold miner. She lived in both Denver and Paris. A story from an April 1929 issue of the Brooklyn Standard Union about the current trend for women-only bars in Paris claimed that Mrs Brown, who frequented these bars, invented the Bee’s Knees gin cocktail.
Was the Bee’s Knees a Prohibition Cocktail?
Many believe, though, that the Bee’s Knees was invented during Prohibition in the United States. The lemon juice and honey syrup were used to mask the flavor of cheap bathtub gin. It lends credence to this version of the drink’s history that ‘the bee’s knees’ was slang used during the Prohibition era for something that was ‘the best’, perhaps a jokey version of the phrase ‘the business’.
It was also around this time that other similar phrases were starting to be used, like the cat’s pajamas and the cat’s whiskers, which pretty much mean the same as the bee’s knees, so the cocktail may not have been Mrs Brown’s invention but maybe she took the recipe to Paris and introduced it there.
Where Did the Phrase ‘The Bee’s Knees’ Come From?
Do bees even have knees? Well, yes they do, sort-of, as their legs have several joints but we just don’t call them knees. They function in the same way, though. The phrase is thought to have emerged in the 18th century as a way of describing something that didn’t exist, the kind of thing that apprentices and kids were sent out to buy as a joke – like, go to the store and get me a can of striped paint and a left-handed hammer.
During the 1920s, which was the period of Prohibition, people began using phrases like the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, the snake’s hips, and the cat’s whiskers, to mean things that were the best, that were cool. In fact, this is when the phrase ‘a cool cat’ came into being, and not in the beatnik days of the 1950s and early 1960s. But anyway, this is about drinks and not dictionaries, so…
Bee’s Knees Cocktail Recipe
Today’s official recipe from the International Bartenders’ Association has added orange juice to Frank Meier’s original recipe.
Ingredients
52.5ml Dry gin
22.5ml lemon juice
22.5ml orange juice
2 teaspoons honey syrup (see recipe below for how to make honey syrup)
Method
Stir honey syrup with lemon and orange juices until it dissolves.
Add gin and shake with ice.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Original Bee’s Knees Cocktail Recipe
Ingredients
2 oz. gin
0.75 oz. honey syrup
0.75 oz. fresh lemon juice
To make the honey syrup, mix equal parts honey and warm water and stir until combined.
Method
Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice.
Shake vigorously to chill, and strain into a cocktail glass.
Garnish with a lemon wedge.
Bee’s Knees Cocktail Variations
As with many simple cocktails, you can play around with the Bee’s Knees recipe. Use rum instead of gin and you have a Honeysuckle. Use vodka instead of gin and you have… well, you can name it yourself. Use Old Tom Gin instead of a Dry Gin and you have a Cat’s Whiskers.
You can also, of course, experiment with the type of honey you use to make your honey syrup. The taste of honeys varies enormously, so instead of using orange juice in the recipe above, try using an orange blossom honey. Or you can use Barr Hill Gin, which is made using Vermont honey. Another gin which includes honey in its recipe is Keepr’s Honey Gin. But however you make it, hopefully the Bee’s Knees cocktail will give you a buzz.
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