USA TODAY 10Best
You’re unlikely to find it on a craft cocktail menu, despite the fact that the Singapore Sling is actually among the older cocktails ever invented, concocted a few years before U.S. prohibition.
The hotel’s Long Bar had all the appeal of a proper British club where gentlemen patrons could drain highballs and snifters from elevenses until last man standing.
But what were their wives to do? Proper English ladies didn't drink alcohol (at least not in public), so they were relegated to sipping tea or punch and watching their husbands get hammered.
Ngiam Tong Boon, the savvy bartender at Raffles, saw a market and seized on it. In 1915, he created the first Singapore Sling.
The pleasantly pink mix of juice and clear gin meant that the ladies could hit the punch bowl as often as they liked without fear of committing social suicide.
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