Starting a UKBG thread with a simple question: did they have a reliable standard jigger size? (Their books are all expressed in percentages or fractions.) Gills? The jigger entry in the OCSC mentions the 1/3 gill (50ml) and 1/6 gill (25ml) jiggers, but I’m not sure how they might apply here.
As you probably suspected, this is a can of worms.
For spirits, until it went metric Great Britain used the gill and its fractions as the basis of measurement. A gill was 5 imperial ounces, which is 142 ml or 4.8 US oz (the US oz was 1.04 Imperial oz). The standard set of measures you used to split it was a half-gill, a quarter-gill and a sixth of a gill.
These measures were, as one can easily see, unhandy. So cocktail bars used their own measures, which were basically the same thing in terms of volumes, but handier and labeled differently. They were numbered in “outs.” The out number told you how meany of that measure went into a gill.
While there as a 2-out or half-gill “thimble measure,’ as the jiggers were called, I’ve never seen one. The largest I’ve seen in general use is the three-out jigger, which was of course a third of a gill or 1 2/3 imperial oz. That works out to 47.3 ml or 1.6 oz US (I’ve mostly rounded things to tenths of a ml, so the fractions might not come out evenly).
Then comes the quarter gill. By rights, this should be a “4-out,” but I’ve never actually seen one marked that. This holds 1 1/4 oz Imperial, or 35.5 ml (1.21 oz US).
Then there’s a 5-out, which is of course one oz Imperial, for which see above. I’ve seen these but I don’t seem to have one, at least not handy. After that, there’s the 6-out, which is 5/6 oz Imperial, or 23.7 ml (.78 oz US). This is the smallest measure I know of, and judging by wear pattern in this well-used double 3-out/6-out jigger, its utility appears to have been limited. Postwar they added a mingy 7-out measure and a 2-oz (Imperial) “double 5-out,” which are pictured in the 1953 UKGB book, but I’ve never seen those, either. The 3, 4, 5 and 6-out measures, on the other hand, are quite common.
Then, of course, there are the Naval measures….
(That’s a half-gill, the daily rum ration in the 20th century, and a 1 1/2 gill, which is the amount of grog they made that rum into before they gave it to you.)
Edited to add some stuff I forgot.
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Good grief! And big thanks for the amazing illustrated presentation!
Should I conclude that Craddock, Tarling, et al were using a 3-out (~1.6 fluid oz US) for these fractional/percentage-based recipes?
That would make this drink…
… into something like:
1 tsp grenadine
0.5 oz dry gin
1 oz Bacardi carta blanca
~0.5 oz lime juice
Now tell us about the coaster: is that Švejk?
I suspect they were building half-gill drinks, in which they’d use either a 2/3 — 1/3, 3-out + 6-out structure or a 1/2 — 1/2, 4-out + 4-out one (with further subdivision if needed). That’s what the jiggers would work best for.
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It is indeed. Originally from the famous U Calicha (or however it’s spelled) in Prague, via an antique barn in Pennsylvania. Maybe a quarter each.
So
1 tsp grenadine
0.8 oz gin
1.6 oz rum
0.5 lime juice
…never felt I needed a 3/4 oz jigger until now.
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That sounds just about right—say, .75 gin, 1.5 rum, .5 lime, barspoon grenadine. That should fit the pretty small glasses they used at the time.
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So if I understand correctly:
If the recipe is expressed in 75%/50%/25% you reach for the quarter gill (4-out) jigger. Fill it full to get your 50%. Fill it halfway for your 25%. 75% is one-and-a-half jiggers. (The sporadic 12½ demands you fill it a quarter.)
If the recipe is expressed in thirds (33⅓/66⅔), then you reach for the 3-out to get your 66%, and then either fill that half-full for your 33% (alternately, grab a 6-out and fill that full).
If the recipe is expressed in 40%/20% then you grab the 5-out, if you’ve got one. I guess 40% is the full 5-out, and 20% is half the 5-out.
They were writing these recipes for themselves. I feel like it has to make for some kind of strong practical sense.
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