The Singapore Sling is a South-East Asian cocktail that was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender working at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel Singapore. The original recipe used gin, Cherry Heering, Bénédictine, and fresh pineapple juice, primarily from Sarawak pineapples which enhance the flavour and create a foamy top.
Most recipes substitute bottled pineapple juice for fresh juice; soda water has to be added for foam. The hotel's recipe was recreated based on the memories of former bartenders and written notes that they were able to discover regarding the original recipe. One of the scribbled recipes is still on display at the Raffles Hotel Museum.
Recipes published in articles about Raffles Hotel before the 1970s are significantly different from current recipes, and "Singapore Slings" drunk elsewhere in Singapore differ from the recipe used at Raffles Hotel.
The current Raffles Hotel recipe is a heavily modified version of the original, most likely changed sometime in the 1970s by Ngiam Tong Boon's nephew. Today, many of the "Singapore Slings" served at Raffles Hotel have been pre-mixed and are made using an automatic dispenser that combines alcohol and pineapple juice to pre-set volumes. They are then blended instead of shaken in order to create a nice, foamy top as well as to save time because of the large number of orders. However, it is still possible to request a shaken version from bartenders.
By the 1980s, the Singapore Sling was often little more than gin, bottled sweet and sour, and grenadine. With the move towards fresh juices and the re-emergence of quality products like Cherry Heering, the cocktail has again become a semblance of its former self.
Famous quotes containing the word sling:
“Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the wadi, and put them in his shepherd s bag, in the pouch; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 17:40.