Coup de Roulis cocktail

This rosy coup holds a drink from Cocktails de Paris, a book of cocktail recipes from Paris, published in 1929. (It’s available to download* for free here.) I was attracted to it because it called for Cherry Rocher, a French liqueur produced by a distillery that was founded in 1704 and is still making it today. Coup de roulis translates to “strong blow,” referring to the strong sway or roll of a boat. My guess is that maybe it got its name because it has four different spirits in it? No matter, I needed a strong drink last week when my apartment sprung a fuite d’eau, causing a flood.

The Paris cocktail book is an excursion back in time, as was the leak, harkening back to other, um…issues I’ve had with my apartment. In the pages, there are words used, such as Angustura (with an alternative spelling that may be from days of yore) and ‘focking,’ a term I’d never heard of either, and when I searched Google for “cocktail focking,” let’s just say most of the search results were adult-only…and I don’t mean in the cocktail department.

When listed as an ingredient in the book, Courvoisier always included the tagline “the Brandy of Napoléon,” which suggests sponsored posts aren’t exactly new**. And most drinks are measured in proportions rather than ounces or milliliters, and at the end of the book there are ten pages listing Les Grands Bars in Paris, which all sound like pretty swell places to have a libation back in the day.

This Coup de Roulis won the Prix d’honneur du Championnat de Cocktail des Artistes de Paris for Nyna Myral and Robert Burnier, and I feel like there must be a prize for me, who seems to have gone through the worst with my apartment. I presented this cocktail in an Instagram Live Apéro Hour video with Romain while the water was rising underfoot. Fortunately, this time the plumber was a hero, unlike in L’Appart, where the plumber neglected to put drains where water is supposed to drain, like, under a sink.

After a couple of visits, he discovered a serpillière (water towel) clogging the main drainpipe of the building, which was redirecting a good portion of the drainage water from the roof into my apartment. It would be my pleasure to give the easy-on-the-eyes fellow a prize for his competence, and he has my phone number in case he’d like to meet up for a drink, or anything else.

For this drink, I used Guignolet, a cherry liqueur and apéritif that I made from the recipe in Drinking French, which you can spice up with a little cinnamon or star anise if you make it, and used that in place of the Cherry Rocher. You will need fresh cherries to make it, however if you can’t wait, frozen cherries would do. Otherwise I offer a few other alternatives in the headnote before the recipe. With all the stuff going on at the moment, here and there, you might be finding yourself in need of a strong blow, too. If so, give this one a try.

*The book download is from a reputable site at the time of publishing this post, which is subject to change. As anything downloadable off the internet is, make sure to take any appropriate precautions and ensure you’re downloading for a trusted website.

**One thing that has changed, however, is that cookbooks and recipe books no longer have ads in them. Cocktails de Paris is illustrated with beautiful art deco-style ads for liquors, spirits, as well as cocktail bars, cafés and restaurants in Paris.