The 20th Century

The final recipe

If you’re just here for the recipe, the perfect 20th Century is:

Ingredients

Ingredient	Amount
Botanical gin Our pick: Suntory Roku	1 ⅓ oz
London dry gin Our pick: Tanqueray London Dry Gin	⅓ oz
Lillet Blanc	¾ oz
Tempus Fugit Spirits crème de cacao	½ oz
Juice of a Eureka lemon (squeezed without expressing oil from the peel by holding the fruit with one’s fingers and working a fork back and forth to release the juice)	½ oz

Preparation

To make one 20th Century:

1. Chill a coupe glass in a freezer for at least 30 minutes.

2. Mix all ingredients above in a 2-piece shaker.

3. Fill the shaker ⅔ full with ~1-inch ice cubes directly from a freezer.

4. Shake the shaker vigorously for 15 seconds.

5. Using a Hawthorne strainer in the ungated position, strain the drink into the pre-chilled coupe.

6. Express a strip of lemon peel over the glass, then cut a vertical slit down the center of the peel. Using the slit, tuck the peel onto the edge of the glass.

7. Serve immediately.

The goal of a perfect 20th Century

The 20th Century is named after the iconic Art Deco locomotive designed by Henry Dreyfuss for service between New York and Chicago. It was a seamless union of technology with savoir-faire, so much so that the notion of an exclusive red carpet originated from Dreyfuss’ design for its boarding platform.

The unifying theme of Art Deco was the application of new materials, manufacturing processes, and frames of scientific reference to older systems of aesthetics. Stainless steel, Bakelite molding, and aerodynamic curves were used to re-implement the graphic design of Art Nouveau, or to echo the architecture of the classical period. Likewise, in the remarkably delicate four-ingredient dance of the 20th Century, one can detect two themes. First, a sense that bartenders of the 1930s were beginning to experiment with combinations far more ambitious than the two-and-a-half ingredients of the Old Fashioned or the Sherry Cobbler. Second, the notion that even such high-flying concepts should still be grounded in deep-rooted, universal templates like the sour.

And a high-flying concept it is; the perfect 20th Century has to maintain balance among four ingredients that each tend to come in strongly at different moments during a sip. The ideal journey begins with the pungency of expressed lemon oil on the nose, followed by crispness of the quinquina on the tongue, then by the lemon building up and spilling out until disturbed by the beginning of a swallow, at which point a balance of chocolate, lemon, and quinine crescendos until the drink fades out.

A review of the sources

Of our canonical sources that describe the origin of the 20th Century, all agree on 1937’s Cafe Royal Cocktail Book as the work in which it was first published. The original recipe has a simple 2:1:1:1 ratio among gin and the other ingredients, likely prioritizing memorizability and mixing simplicity over precisely-tuned flavor balance.

Compared to the Daiquiri, the 20th Century has been relatively stable over time regarding the specific ingredients recommended in bar books. No wide variety of sweeteners has been argued for. Likewise, apart from Joerg Meyer’s and Death & Co.’s swerves in the gentian-laced direction of Americanos, and apart from Simon Difford’s flirtation with using a vermouth, Lillet has remained the aromatized wine in most recipes. The most serious deviation from tradition may be our own recipe’s recommendation of a split botanical gin/dry gin base, despite every source we consulted recommending a dry gin either directly, or through implication by failing to specify a variety.

Published recipes are similarly stable as to the recommended ratios among ingredients. Gin:crème de cacao ranges from Difford’s 1.5:1 to Haigh’s 3:1 (with the exception of DeGroff’s “Is there any cacao in this?” 8:1). The crème de cacao:white aromatized wine:lemon juice ratio also stays near the 1:1:1 of the original in most versions.

The evolution of the 20th Century is thus that of a recipe strongly anchored by the iconicity of its signature ingredient (crème de cacao) and its identity as a sour. Once those two constraints are accepted, the necessity of gin (to cut through the potentially-cloying curtain of cacao, and to meld pleasantly with the lemon) follows, and Lillet is brought along by its known ability to complement both gin and lemon (as in the Corpse Reviver No. 2).

Author	Source	Year	Gin oz	Gin type	Crème de cacao oz	Crème de cacao type	White aromatized wine oz	White aromatized wine type	Lemon juice oz	Preparation	Garnish
C. A. Tuck / William J. Tarling	Café Royal Cocktail Book	1937	⅖ glass (⅘ oz)	Booth’s Dry	⅕ glass (⅖ oz)	Crème de cacao	⅕ glass (⅖ oz)	Lillet	⅕ glass (⅖ oz)	Shake.	None
Gary Regan	The Joy of Mixology	2003	1 ½	(unspecified)	¾	White crème de cacao	¾	Lillet Blonde (an alternate name for Lillet Blanc)	¾	Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.	None
Ted Haigh	Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails	2004	1 ½	(unspecified)	½	"Light" crème de cacao	¾	Lillet Blanc	¾	Shake in an iced cocktail shaker and strain into a cocktail glass.	Lemon twist
Dave Arnold	Liquid Intelligence	2014	1 ½	47% ABV gin	¾	White crème de cacao	¾	Lillet Blanc	¾	Shake and serve in a coupe.	None
Alex Day, David Kaplan, and Nick Fauchald	Death & Co.	2014	1 ½	London dry gin	¾	White crème de cacao	¾	Lillet Blanc	¾	Shake and double-strain into a coupe.	None
Joerg Meyer	Le Lion Bar de Paris (via DiffordsGuide.com)	2016	1 ⅔	Rutte dry gin	1	Dutch white crème de cacao	1	Americano bianco	⅓	Shake and fine-strain into a coupe.	Orange twist
Jim Meehan	Meehan’s Bartender’s Manual	2017	1 ½	Tanqueray London Dry	¾	Marie Brizard white crème de cacao	¾	Lillet Blanc	¾	Shake with ice and fine-strain into a chilled coupe.	None
Alex Day, David Kaplan, and Nick Fauchald	Cocktail Codex (“ideal” version)	2018	1 ½	Beefeater London Dry	¾	Marie Brizard white crème de cacao	¾	Cocchi Americano	¾	Shake with ice and double-strain into a coupe.	None
Simon Difford	DiffordsGuide.com	2020	1 ½	Rutte dry gin	1	Dutch Cacao white crème de cacao	⅔	Noilly-Prat extra dry	⅓	Shake and fine-strain into a martini glass.	Lemon twist
Dale DeGroff	The New Craft of the Cocktail	2020	2	Ford's gin	¼	Tempus Fugit crème de cacao	½	Lillet Blanc	¼	Shake with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.	None
Tuxedo No. 2	TuxedoNo2.com	2020	1 ½	London dry gin	¾	Crème de cacao	¾	Lillet or Cocchi Americano	½	Combine all ingredients with ice and shake. Strain into a coupe.	Lemon twist

Experimenting with the variables

Here are the independent variables we tuned to perfect the 20th Century:

• Overall proportions of the key ingredients: gin, aromatized wine, crème de cacao, and lemon juice

• Primary gin used for the spirit base

• Whether to split the primary gin with another type of gin, and if so what type to split it with

• Type (quinquina wine vs. dry vermouth vs. Americano) and brand of aromatized wine

• Brand of crème de cacao

• Type of lemon

• Lemon-squeezing method

• Type of shake

• Type of strainer and method of straining

• Whether to add saline solution, and how much

• Garnish

A few variables that we didn’t explore here, but rather felt were sufficiently well-established for the 20th Century:

• Type of glass: Historical sources most often call for a coupe when pouring a 20th Century, but some bartenders and cocktail guides do diverge from this; Simon Difford calls for a martini glass, while some other recipes depict it in a Nick & Nora. We find coupes to be categorically superior to martini glasses regardless of the cocktail in question; our view is that coupes are more aesthetically appealing across the spectrum of liquid colors and opacities, and that they are also inarguably easier to grasp since the drinker can curl their fingers under the flatter bowl. Nick & Noras have a place in serving cocktails with highly spiritous or otherwise intense flavor profiles, since their narrower bowl and high center of gravity nudge the drinker toward taking smaller sips than a coupe does; the 20th Century, however, is only a moderately intense drink. The fact that the coupe has the most historical consensus among our canonical 20th Century recipes was the final argument in its favor.

• Whether to chill the glass: Chilling the glass keeps the drink colder for slightly longer, and can be done easily in a standard home kitchen.

• Type of ice: As a resource primarily intended for home bartenders, we use standard (~1 inch on each of 3 dimensions) home-refrigerator ice-machine cubes for shaking rather than large or crushed ice.

Proportions

Getting the right balance between sweet, sour and herbal is key to the 20th Century. Too much gin, and you’re in the uncanny valley on the way to a martini; too much lemon, and you’ve got a too-sour sour; too much crème de cacao, and you’re drinking your dessert.

We used Tuxedo No. 2’s formulation as our starting point, as the proportions were similar to several of our reference sources and had a fairly equal balance between all non-base spirit ingredients. We then experimented with tuning the balance of each ingredient slightly:

	Suntory Roku Gin	Lillet Blanc	Crème de cacao	Lemon juice
Original (Tuxedo No. 2)	1 ½ oz	¾ oz	¾ oz	½ oz
Less crème de cacao	1 ½ oz	½ oz	½ oz	½ oz
More gin, less lemon	1 ¾ oz	¾ oz	½ oz	⅜ oz
More gin, same lemon	1 ⅔ oz	¾ oz	½ oz	½ oz

The original formulation we tried had a powerful chocolate flavor but was overwhelmingly sweet: more like a syrupy after-dinner drink than the sophisticated luxury promised by the cocktail’s name. But just tuning down the crème de cacao didn’t solve the problem: the drink then became more of a sour than anything else, with citrus overwhelming the drink’s characteristic chocolate notes.

To course-correct, we upped the gin from 1 ½ oz to 1 ¾ oz, and simultaneously reduced the lemon slightly from ½ oz to ⅜ oz. This turned out to be an over-correction, putting the drink in martini-like territory, and missing the lemon’s zing to counteract the harsher alcohol bite. So for a final balancing act, we adjusted the gin slightly down to 1 ⅔ oz, and brought the lemon back up to its original ½ oz.

This was just about the balance we were looking for: botanical notes from the gin, crisp bitterness from the fortified wine, sweetness from the cacao, and refreshing sour from the lemon.

With this, we had our default proportions in place, so we could move on to looking at the ingredients themselves.

Finding the best gin

In reviewing our source recipes, the perfect gin for a 20th Century appeared to be a foregone conclusion: where specified, all sources call for a London Dry. But we’re here to test those assumptions. Our goal was to see what different styles brought to the table: a London Dry (which, as per the EU definition of the London Gin category, must have juniper as the predominant botanical) ; a botanical gin with a more even balance of ingredients; and the citrusy, spicy Plymouth.

For our experiments, we decided to compare the following gins as the base of our drink:

• London Dry Gin: Tanqueray London Dry

• Botanical: Suntory Roku

• Plymouth-style gin: Plymouth Gin

Gin base	Notes
Tanqueray London Dry	Although this would have been the most true to the original recipe, the juniper punch of an all-Tanqueray 20th Century overwhelmed the subtle bitter notes of the cacao, yielding a drink with a much more herbal personality than we were hoping for. (See graph below.)
Suntory Roku	Roku is one of our favorite gins for its balance of botanicals and florality, especially with regard to its citrus and juniper notes, and it didn’t disappoint here. While the spiciness of the gin came through, the cacao was still able to shine, and the floral notes of the Lillet came through more strongly, without too much of its sourness.
Plymouth Gin	Plymouth saw a surge of popularity in the 1930s (just like the 20th Century) when it was called for by name in many recipes in The Savoy Cocktail Book. As a less juniper-forward gin than Tanqueray, we thought it might fare well here. But unlike Tanqueray, which provided too much of a punch, Plymouth suffered from a distinct lack of it. The cacao tended to overwhelm any herbality and spiciness, resulting in a less flavorful blend. We passed on this.

Our winner: Suntory Roku

Splitting the base

Now that we had our base gin, it was time to try splitting it with some of our other candidate gins. Why split the base? Similar to splitting the rum in our Perfect Daiquiri, this would allow us to preserve the essential character of the base, while tuning slightly to adjust the juniper level, alcohol kick, or citrus peel. Given the delicate balance that a 20th Century requires, tuning these variables was essential to getting the perfect drink.

We started by testing pure Roku against several 4:1 splits of Roku with another gin:

Base gin	Gin to split base with	Lillet	Crème de cacao	Lemon juice
1 ⅔ oz Suntory Roku	none	¾ oz Lillet Blanc	½ oz Tempus Fugit	½ oz
1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku	⅓ oz Tanqueray London Dry	"	"	"
1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku	⅓ oz Plymouth Gin	"	"	"
1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku	⅓ oz Leopold Bros. Navy Strength Gin	"	"	"

Here’s what we found:

Gin Split	Notes
None	What we get here is two distinct peaks of flavor: the sharp peak of herbality followed by a sharp peak of chocolate. If this formulation has a weakness, it’s a finish dominated by chocolate. A split gin with a stronger herbal note throughout could help maintain balance throughout the whole sip.
⅓ oz Tanqueray London Dry	This solves the problem of the no-split through the heavy application of juniper. As the herbality lingers, it stays just long enough to avoid any sickly sweet aftertaste, with the chocolate taking over the rest of the flavor journey. It also enhances the nose, with more citrus and juniper notes balancing the chocolate hit.
⅓ oz Plymouth Gin	Similar to our first experiment with Plymouth, this didn’t bring much to the table given the other strong flavors in play with this drink. It lies flat in the mouth with almost zero herbality, letting the lemon and chocolate take over. The overall impression is more watery and less clean than the original.
⅓ oz Leopold Bros. Navy Strength Gin	An overproof gin not only provides a stronger, more concentrated alcohol punch, it also can enhance other notes in the drink. In this case, the Leopold brought a crackling peppery-ness to the finish of the drink, but unfortunately the alcohol overwhelmed some of the more delicate floral notes of the Roku. Would the pepper notes be something worth exploring in a three-gin split? Maybe. But a three-gin 20th Century seemed like a bridge too far, since we try to balance elevated cocktail craft with the number of bottles our readers have to keep in the bar.

Our winner: Tanqueray London Dry Gin

As a final step, we tested the proportions of the split between our Suntory Roku base and the Tanqueray addition, titrating both up and down from our 4:1 starting point.

Base gin	Split proportion	Lillet	Crème de cacao	Lemon juice
1 ⅙ oz Roku	½ oz Tanqueray	¾ oz Lillet Blanc	½ oz Tempus Fugit	½ oz
1 ⅓ oz Roku	⅓ oz Tanqueray	"	"	"
1 ½ oz Roku	⅙ oz Tanqueray	"	"	"

Here’s what we found:

Split Proportion	Notes
½ oz Tanqueray	Tanqueray was immediately apparent on first sip, displaying an excess of astringent woodsiness; the juniper suppressed the cacao at first, and continued to mute it as it lingered throughout the sip, making it harder to taste the characteristic chocolate note at the end.
⅓ oz Tanqueray	This was identical to the proportion we tried in the last test, and it produced the same result: a pleasing balance of the juniper and chocolate throughout the full course of the sip.
⅙ oz Tanqueray	This smaller proportion of Tanqueray also offered a solid balance, albeit with a weaker herbal flavor, dwindling to just a hint at the end of the sip. We ultimately agreed that a higher proportion of Tanqueray is a better choice for the cocktail as a whole, since it offers the drinker more sips before they’re at risk of finding the chocolate cloying or too sweet.

Our winner (after discussion): 1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku, ⅓ oz Tanqueray

Finding the best aromatized wine

Several constraints must be observed in selecting the right aromatized wine to maintain the 20th Century’s graceful flavor balance. Since crème de cacao’s cacao flavor is unavoidably at the center of the drink, and that flavor unavoidably comes with a strong dose of sweetness, one cannot afford to use a wine that piles much sweetness on top of it. A strongly bitter element is necessary to harmonize the lemon and cacao as a sip fades out, but said bitterness can’t come with a woodsiness or herbality that takes over the flavor profile.

Here’s what we tried:

Base gin	Gin to split the base with	Lillet	Crème de cacao	Lemon juice
1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku	⅓ oz Tanqueray	¾ oz Lillet Blanc	½ oz Tempus Fugit	½ oz
"	"	¾ oz Lillet Rosé	"	"
"	"	¾ oz Cocchi Americano	"	"
"	"	¾ oz La Quintinye Extra Dry White Vermouth	"	"
"	"	¾ oz Byrrh	"	"

And here’s what we found:

Aromatized Wine	Notes
Lillet Blanc	The most common choice among our sources, and for good reason: Lillet Blanc contributes the right amount of quinine bitterness for its volume without bringing in any flavors that clash with the other ingredients.
Lillet Rosé	The primary problem with Lillet Rosé is that the astringent, buttery character of the rosé displaces the cacao flavor (although not the sweetness) in the middle and end of the drink, distracting from the drink’s signature lemon-cacao blend. It’s not an outright unpleasant combination, but it is a missed opportunity. The color of the mixed cocktail is also less appealing than with the Lillet Blanc, making this a categorically inferior choice.
Cocchi Americano	The most similar to the Lillet Blanc (unsurprisingly, as they are both white grape quinquina wines), Cocchi Americano is simply too sweet for the drink. The problem is a simple matter of flavor budgeting: a 20th Century needs a certain amount of crème de cacao to achieve the right amount of cacao flavor, that crème de cacao brings a certain amount of sweetness to the drink, and very little additional sweetness is left before reaching the optimal point. The relatively dry Lillet Blanc hits that point on the mark; the sweeter Cocchi Americano overshoots it, tamping down in particular the bitterness of the cacao, the piney sear of the gin’s juniper, and the florality of the other botanicals.
Dry White Vermouth (La Quintinye Extra Dry)	Like Lillet Rosé, dry white vermouth brings a flavor (in this case, sourness) which suppresses the cacao enough to upset the balance of the drink. Unlike with Lillet Rosé, this one adds another flavor (the strong medicinality of La Quintinye’s particular herbal blend) that clashes outright, especially at the close of a sip, making it the least pleasant of the options we tried.
Byrrh	While not as balanced as the Lillet Blanc version — Byrrh’s sweetness teams up with the crème de cacao to overpower, throughout a sip, all the subtler notes that should instead be in balance — this is quite a pleasant drink. The flavor has strong aspects of chocolate-covered cherries, due to the port-like dried-stonefruit aspect of the Byrrh; while this isn’t the right path to a perfect 20th Century, it’s likely a good idea seed for inventing an entirely different cocktail.

Finding the best crème de cacao

Historically, the 20th Century is made with white crème de cacao. Although not explicitly called for in the Cafe Royal Cocktail Book version, its presence is implied: Alexanders, one of the first families of recipes to popularize the use of this liqueur, typically used the lighter version, and most subsequent variations on the 20th Century do ask for it specifically.

But what about dark crème de cacao? Although less used in a 20th Century according to our sources (likely due to the visual impact it can have on a drink), allowing the end product to be dark can enable manufacturers to achieve a deeper cacao flavor. Tempus Fugit’s version achieves this by not only distilling raw cacao (as in white crème de cacao), but then ​​macerating that distillate with more cacao and vanilla bean, contributing both flavor and color.

Marie Brizard, a French manufacturer, manufactures both a white and a dark crème de cacao; the former is called for by several of our source recipes. However, both can be harder to find even in major cities in the U.S. In keeping with our mission to use widely-available ingredients, we opted to try Giffard’s version as our white crème de cacao, and Tempus Fugit as our dark, using the proportions and ingredients that we settled on in previous tests:

Crème de cacao	Notes
Giffard white crème de cacao	The traditional choice for the 20th Century ultimately underwhelmed us. With the proportions that we had tuned, the cacao barely stood out in this version, tasting more like a Tom Collins, with the lemon as the star and the cacao as the barely-there supporting cast. The mouthfeel was also thinner, since the Giffard had less viscosity than the Tempus Fugit.
Tempus Fugit dark crème de cacao	Using the dark crème de cacao solved several problems. It was able to balance the strong citrus flavor, without being too sweet; it offered a rich, bitter note from the macerated cacao; and it gave the drink a unctuousness that the Giffard version lacked. And despite our worries that it would muddy the color of the drink, the amount we chose for flavor balance didn’t make the drink look like dishwater. Instead, it gave it a golden hue that we saw as a plus.

Our winner: Tempus Fugit dark crème de cacao.

Finding the best lemon juice

When perfecting our Daiquiri recipe, we experimented with several different limes; with lemons, our options got narrower. Eureka lemons, the most common variety at most U.S. grocery stores, are what most bars have on hand, and what we typically use for cocktails. But Meyer lemons, their thinner-skinned, sweeter cousins, are also widely available; we love the slight orange flavor and florality they bring to lemon desserts. So what would they do in a dessert-adjacent drink?

We tried both types of lemons 1:1 in our now-standard recipe:

Base gin	Gin to split the base with	Lillet	Crème de cacao	Lemon type
1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku	⅓ oz Tanqueray	¾ oz Lillet Blanc	½ oz Tempus Fugit	½ oz Meyer lemon juice
"	"	"	"	½ oz Eureka lemon juice

Here's what we found:

Lemon Type	Notes
Meyer lemon	The Meyer was apparent right away in our blind taste test, with a nose that was more a combination of orange and lemon than a straight lemon hit. It’s floral notes also came through on the first sip, but that complexity quickly turned to a watery sweetness. Without the acidity of the typical Eureka lemon, the citrus couldn’t stand up to the cacao and Lillet. As an added downside, the thin rind doesn’t readily express oils.
Eureka lemon	The standard cocktail lemon reigned supreme here. The Eureka’s tartness comes through earlier in the flavor journey, helping to balance the sweetness from the aromatized wine and liqueur. What’s more, its vegetal notes play well with the juniper in the Tanqueray, giving a hint of peppery freshness to a drink that could easily veer into dessert territory.

Now that we confirmed Eureka was the way to go, we needed to know how to juice it. We noticed a distinct difference in our Daiquiri when we juiced with a fork versus a hand squeezer, due to bitter oils from the lime working their way into the final result when more pressure was applied. We decided to test whether this would be the case with lemons too.

The results were less pronounced than they were with limes. Whereas both of us noticed the difference between the two lime-squeezing methods right away, in the 20th Century Nicole couldn’t taste the difference between the fork-juiced lemon version and the hand-squeezed one. But Andrew could: In two blind tests, he identified the fork-juiced version as being less bitter, with a better balance of sweetness throughout the sip. Presumably, this is a result of the same factors we saw with squeezing limes: citrus oil or pith produced in the mechanical squeezing process suppresses the sweetness of the ingredients other than juice. In any case, we agreed that it’s worth the extra effort in a home bar to juice your lemons with a fork for the 20th Century.

Shaking and straining

Classically, as a sour, the 20th Century is shaken. As with the Daiquiri, we tried both the traditional shake (over ice) and the triple reverse dry (dry-wet-dry). Again, as with the Daiquiri, we could not discern a meaningful difference in mouthfeel or flavor balance, so we went with the simpler traditional dry shake.

With regards to shaking, we knew from initial tests that we needed to specify a two-piece shaker with a Hawthorne strainer, since using a cobbler shaker resulted in pulp in the drink that was somewhat unpleasant to the eyes, even if only marginally detectable on the tongue. As with the method of shaking, we could not discern a difference between using the Hawthorne strainer ungated or gated, so we went with the ungated as requiring (if only very slightly) less effort.

Garnish

In listing the garnish options for a 20th Century, we realized that a garnish can serve any combination of the following purposes:

To provide scent expressed over the surface of the drink, as with a citrus peel, even if it is discarded after expression To provide scent from a garnish that is positioned on the drink when served to the recipient To help the drinker transition more smoothly into each sip of a high-flavor-intensity drink (like the 20th Century) As a visual aid to the family of drink being offered, especially if the recipient has minimal context (e.g., is unfamiliar with the cocktail in question, is ordering hastily from a menu before a bartender moves on, or is taking a pre-made drink from a tray)

With those potential functions in mind, we tested the following garnish options:

Base gin	Gin to split the base with	Lillet	Crème de cacao	Lemon juice	Shake & strain	Garnish
1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku	⅓ oz Tanqueray	¾ oz Lillet Blanc	½ oz Tempus Fugit	½ oz	Shake with ice; use ungated Hawthorne strainer	No garnish, no expressed oils
"	"	"	"	"	"	Lemon peel, expressed and discarded
"	"	"	"	"	"	Lemon peel, expressed and tucked onto the side of the glass
"	"	"	"	"	"	Orange peel, expressed and tucked onto the side of the glass

Garnish Type	Notes
No garnish, no expressed oils	One problem with this version is that the constituent ingredients of a 20th Century are much stronger on the palate than on the nose (as opposed to, for example, sipping mezcal or long-aged rums, where a strong flavor is complemented by a strong nose). The lemon oil on the nose helps the drinker transition more smoothly into a sip. Another problem is that the proportion of cacao in the drink required for it to be noticeable requires a lot of lemon counterbalancing, and lemon juice on the tongue, unaugmented by scent, simply isn’t enough to do the job.
Lemon peel, expressed and discarded	More counterweighting of cacao with lemon oil is better, but not as good as oil and peel together.
Lemon peel, expressed and tucked onto the side of the glass	While only having lemon oil on the nose is better than neither oil nor peel, oil and peel is the best of all. The additional lemon-oil scent present throughout the process of drinking the cocktail, along with the vegetality added by having the peel present under the drinker’s nose, provides an even better counterweight to the cacao and the quinquina wine. The lemon peel tucked onto the glass also gives a hint that the drink is a cocktail and contains lemon; otherwise, a casual observer of a golden-colored cocktail in an ungarnished coupe might assume they were about to drink a sparkling wine.
Orange peel, expressed and tucked onto the side of the glass	Orange’s scents (both oil and peel) are an intensifier of, not a counterpoint to, crème de cacao, making the whole drink too sweet. Orange oil is also considerably more floral than lemon oil, and this element of florality is a poor combination with cacao.

Saline solution

Adding salt to a 20th Century certainly wasn’t part of its original formulation, but it has been a popular addition to citrus cocktails since Dave Arnold popularized it at Booker & Dax. “Any cocktail that includes fruit, chocolate, or coffee benefits from a pinch of salt,” Arnold writes in Liquid Intelligence.

Since the 20th Century includes two of those three, it seemed like the perfect chance to experiment with saline ourselves. Corpse Revived’s excellent deep-dive into the 20th Century also recommends it.

Arnold recommends a 20% saline solution (20g salt to 80mL water), which is what we used for our tests (although you could add a pinch of salt instead):

Base gin	Gin to split the base with	Lillet	Crème de cacao	Lemon juice	20% saline solution
1 ⅓ oz Suntory Roku	⅓ oz Tanqueray	¾ oz Lillet Blanc	½ oz Tempus Fugit	½ oz	2 drops
"	"	"	"	"	n/a

The result? Underwhelming. With the saline added, the sweetness of the drink is moderated, which alters its previous balance and flavor journey. Instead of emphasizing the flavors, making them sing, we found that the saline solution rounded them out too much. The tartness of the lemon, the bite of the gin, and the sweetness of the liqueur were tamer, and lost the character of the drink.

Is saline the secret ingredient? In this case, we have to say no.