Old Fashion

The first documented definition of the word "cocktail" was in response to a reader's letter asking to define the word in the May 6, 1806, issue of The Balance and Columbia Repository in Hudson, New York. In the May 13, 1806, issue, the paper's editor wrote that it was a potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar; it was also referred to at the time as a bittered sling.^[2][3]

The first alleged use of the specific name "Old Fashioned" was for a Bourbon whiskey cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s club inLouisville, Kentucky. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City.^[4] The "Old Fashioned" was the favorite cocktail of President Harry S Truman and his wife Bess.

Preparation of a drink quite similar to an Old Fashioned is mentioned in chapter 18 in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), second paragraph.