Harvard-Yale Game, In Cocktail Form

This is the weekend of "The Game," which guarantees that the bars of Cambridge will be clogged with "Teh Douche." Bostonist is researching the thematically-correct home-drinking alternatives:

Harvard Cocktail

1 1/2 oz. cognac (Bostonist used Germain-Robin XO)
1 1/2 oz. red vermouth (we used Martini & Rossi)
3 dashes Angostura bitters

Stir, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist lemon peel over top and then rub the rim with it. Garnish with rubble of global financial market.

Some variants call for a little lemon juice and grenadine, but David Wondrich, hewing to an 1895 recipe, just says to top it with something fizzy—the latter seemed like the better idea, considering this came out a bit syrupy for us, but we couldn't fit anything beyond the three ounces and three dashes in our dainty vintage-size cocktail glasses. Our somewhat biased cocktail-tasting accomplice, A.B.D. McHarvardpants, found it "delicious" and "sophisticated" all the same.

Yale Cocktail

2 oz. dry gin (Bostonist arbitrarily went with Plymouth)
1/3 oz. crème de violette
1/3 oz. dry vermouth (we used Vya)
1 dash bitters (we used Fee's whiskey-barrel-aged aromatic)

Shake with cracked ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The above recipe rather overemphasizes the purple stuff, which is probably because we got it from from the web site of its importer, Haus Alpenz. Mr. McHarvardpants found it overwhelmed the gin and just made him want an Aviation. "It's kind of like visiting Yale: oh, this is nice, but it's not Harvard." (He said all this in Latin, of course, but we think it was meant humorously.) Bostonist took a sip; it did not taste a bit like New Haven.

We've got an old Old Mr. Boston De Luxe Official Bartender's Guide from 1955 that calls for more vermouth and less violet, making it a slightly floral martini. The same book gives us a Harvard Cooler, which we did not test:

Harvard Cooler

1/2 tsp. superfine sugar
2 oz. carbonated water
2 oz. applejack

Stir sugar and carbonated water together in a 12 oz. Collins glass. Fill with cracked ice and add applejack. Top off with more carbonated water, or ginger ale. Insert spiral of orange peel or lemon peel (or both, it says) and dangle the end (or ends!) over the rim of the glass.

Daly's Bartenders' Encyclopedia, published by Tim Daly of Worcester, Mass., in 1903 ("price, 50 cents") lists a more complicated Yale Punch, which "derives its name from the fact of its popularity with students, not only at Yale, but other colleges where they desire everything of the best." We have converted the measurements from pony glasses and wine glasses, but without having made one of these, we can't help you with the indecisiveness of the dashes:

Yale Punch

1 tsp. sugar dissolved in a little water
1 or 3 dashes lemon juice
1 or 2 dashes lime juice
2 or 3 dashes raspberry syrup
2 or 3 dashes Bénédictine
1/2 oz. St. Croix rum (probably any decent dark rum will do here)
2 oz. brandy (the recipe specifies Hennessey)

Mix in a glass filled with ice, and festoon with mint and seasonal fruits. Serve with those newfangled drinking straws. Contract diabetes.

Lyette Mercier contributed several useful phrases to this post.