Gin pahit

Description

Gin Pahit is an alcoholic drink made with gin and bitters, as enjoyed in colonial Malaya. The name means “bitter gin” in Malay.

The recipe, according to the food and beverage service of the Raffles Hotel, is 1½ ounces of gin and ½ ounce of Angostura bitters. At least one book on drinks from the 1930s describes it as identical to a pink gin, which would imply considerably less bitters.

It was referred to by the writer W. Somerset Maugham. For example, his short story, “P. & O.” (Copyright 1926), Maugham’s character Gallagher, an Irishman who had lived in the Federated Malay States for 25 years, orders the drink. Gin pahit appears in several other Maugham stories, including “The Yellow Streak”, set in Borneo, “Footprints in the Jungle”, “The Book-Bag” and “The Letter” all set in Malaya, in “The Outstation” (Two Malay boys,…, came in, one bearing gin pahits,..), and in the novel The Narrow Corner (opening line of Chapter xviii).

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