The granddaddy of chocolate cream drinks, including the slightly-more-fashionable Brandy Alexander. The specifics are lost to time, but according to cocktail historian Barry Popik, it’s likely an invention of bartender Troy Alexander from pre-prohibition New York’s most popular lobster restaurant.
Popik believes that the drink was created in honor of “Phoebe Snow,” a fictitious mascot for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad company. Apparently, bespoke cocktails were part of their marketing platform, as the same campaign spawned the Twentieth Century cocktail, named for the rail line of the same name.
Phoebe Snow was always dressed in pure white to demonstrate how clean the trains were. In keeping with that theme, we recommend that you stick with white crème de cacao. The brown variety tastes just the same, but lacks the same visual appeal.
