The Old Fashioned wasn’t always called the Old Fashioned, and why would it be, when all around it the mixed drinks of the era had startling names like The Morning Glory Fizz, The Flash of Lightning, and The Stars and Stripes?

Compared to these the prosaically-named Old Fashioned sounded a bit, well, old fashioned, and with good reason, because by 1888 when we find the earliest recipe for an Old Fashioned Cocktail, the drink itself was already something of a relic from the past.