I am a fan of the Morgenthaler recipe. I wouldn’t know if it’s authentic, but it’s now what I make at home (using POM), and I agree with his points that (a) the pomegranate molasses adds some nice notes, and (b) it’s relatively quick and easy.
One of these days I’ll try it with fresh-pressed pomegranate juice.
I was just about ready to start experimenting with pomegranate molasses and I revisited these articles. This time around I read this article which @dsoneil cited in his original piece: Gillyflower | Medieval Mead and Beer
The article definitely establishes a robust history of using carnation petals as flavoring agents that merits more exploration in cocktail applications. Note that medieval botanists assumed cloves and carnations were more closely related than contemporary ones do, partly because the flavors were similar. It’s still an open question how much influence the “gillyflower” flavoring tradition had on the evolution of cocktail grenadine, though the answer is certainly non-zero. But I think more attention to edible carnation flavors will produce some interesting directions for grenadine exploration, i.e eschewing orange flower water for clove and other spices.
TLDR: eat/infuse some carnations and see if you can use clove and stuff to make your grenadine taste more like that, and tell us how the cocktails are.
So I got some dried carnations. They smelled like straw or laver, and not particularly floral. I made a tincture and a syrup with the carnations, but I couldn’t convince myself that I was tasting anything beyond the sugar or alcohol, though my wife insists she can identify the distinctive flavor and is getting some clove notes. Adding some of the tincture to the syrup was a very dynamic flavor. Googling “dianthus syrup” reveals that plenty of non-cocktail people are working with this ingredient, and they are effusive about the powerful fragrance. Eventually I’ll have to grow some fresh carnations from seed—or get rich and desperate enough to pay for fresh flowers air freighted from California.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C9VeBBMJZVx
I also made a clove syrup, mixed it 1:3 with pomegranate simple, and added a few drops of rose water. This flavor is VERY satisfying—anyone who’s had agua de Jamaica knows how well the spice and floral complement each other.
I tried a Jack Rose apiece with these two syrups and also raspberry syrup, using Martin’s ratio above. Honestly, the lemon juice predominates in all of these, but the pomegranate clove gives the best depth and balance.
So, to recap, this seems like the timeline:
1a. homemade, quasi-medical Dianthus syrup dating from medieval times in Europe, produced by druggists up to mid-late 19th century
1b. homemade pomegranate syrup and molasses dating from 18th century in Europe and earlier in the Middle East, culminating in Rillet’s pomegranate grenadine in 1869
2a. the essential oil-derived syrup (typically containing ingredients such as clove, cinnamon, orange, rose, vanilla) produced by druggists in imitation of 1a AND 1b, dating to at least 19th century and onward, conflating the two
2b. industrially produced grenadine syrups typically containing only sugar and some acids and coloring in imitation of all the above, legitimized in 1912 by “United States v. Thirty Cases of Grenadine Syrup” and persisting to this day
3. Fresno State pomegranate grenadine from 1923 leading to United Fruit pomegranate grenadine in 1934
4. Trader Vic and imitators pomegranate grenadine, 1950’s—1980’s
5. Cocktail revival pomegranate grenadine, 2000’s