Casablanca to North by Northwest: How to make five drinks that lubricated classic movies

And what better way to mark Belfast’s success in Hollywood than by mixing up a cocktail that comes straight from the silver screen? Here’s a tray-full of drink recipes whose popularity was assured after they were name-checked in a classic movie.

Casablanca: Champagne Cocktail

Some would have you believe that the French 75 — a cocktail named after a First World War cannon and consisting of gin, champagne, lemon juice and sugar — is Casablanca’s most famous drink, but in the film it was ordered by an oily Nazi officer who fancied his chances with Humphrey Bogart’s discarded girlfriend, so if your taste is more for a freedom-loving French Resistance aperitif, try a Champagne Cocktail, as ordered by Paul Henreid’s hero of the Underground, Victor Laszlo. It’s also one of the oldest cocktail recipes around, dating back nearly 200 years.

To make two of Victor’s Champagne Cocktails, douse two sugar cubes with a quarter teaspoonful of Angostura bitters poured onto each. Fill two champagne flutes with 75ml of your best bubbly, pop a cube in each glass and top up with a tablespoonful of cognac. Give it all a gentle stir, garnish with a strip of orange peel and enjoy.

Some Like It Hot: Manhattan

Talking of sugar, how could any gather-up of movie cocktails ignore the classic sleeper train pyjama party scene in Some Like It Hot? Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe) is being schmoozed by Jack Lemmon over a bottle of bourbon in a curtained-off sleeping compartment when another band member butts in. Sugar remembers the band member has a bottle of vermouth and calls over the rest of the gang to make Manhattans. “Manhattans?” asks the exasperated Jack, “who needs Manhattans at this time of night?”

Well if you do, here’s how to make enough for two and never mind the rest of the band. Mix 130mls of bourbon with 60mls of sweet vermouth, add four dashes of Angostura bitters and two of orange bitters, stir well with ice, strain into coupe glasses and garnish with a twist of lemon.

North by Northwest: Gibson

Staying with trains, here’s how to be as suave as Cary Grant with this sophisticated take on a classic Martini. Grant, playing on-the-run advertising executive Roger Thornhill, famously orders a Gibson as he flirts with archetypal Hitchcock blonde Eva Marie Saint over dinner on a sleeper train. I’m not sure that he ever gets to enjoy the drink, however, as cops board the train and Grant has to make a less-than-suave exit.

Anyway, here’s how you can make one when the authorities aren’t pursuing you. Stir 125mls of dry gin with 25mls of extra dry vermouth and plenty of ice. Pour into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with two small cocktail onions on a skewer.

The Big Sleep: Scotch Mist

It’s the perfect accompaniment to the sizzling dialogue in this grandaddy of film noirs, when sultry Lauren Bacall broods over a Scotch Mist as she tries to pay off private eye Philip Marlowe with $500 and a promise she might hold his hand (it was 1946 after all). It’s the drink every femme fatale should order.

To rustle one up, fill a tumbler with crushed ice and add 60mls of good blended whisky. Take a slice of lemon and twist it so the juice goes into the glass, then drop the peel in — stylishly, of course.

The Big Lebowski: White Russian

Which leads us nicely on to the Coen Brothers’ cult reinvention of The Big Sleep, in which Bogart’s hard-boiled detective is replaced by bathrobe-wearing bowling alley slacker Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, whose favourite tipple is the White Russian. Unfortunately, one of them is spiked with a Mickey Finn that knocks him cold.

To make one that won’t do the same (unless you have too many), combine 90mls of vodka with 40mls each of Kahlua coffee liqueur and single cream plus plenty of ice. Stir gently and serve.