The Hot Toddy: A Brief and Warming History

The hot toddy is the simplest drink in the winter canon and the most durable. Spirit, sweetener, citrus, hot water. It has survived three centuries with essentially no changes, which is more than can be said for almost anything else behind a bar.

Scottish roots and a disputed name

The toddy is firmly associated with Scotland, where it has been a hearth drink since at least the eighteenth century, made with whisky, hot water and sugar, sometimes with a spoon of honey and a twist of lemon.

The name, though, almost certainly came from somewhere else entirely.

The most widely accepted explanation traces it to taddy or tari, the fermented sap of palm trees drunk across South Asia. British traders and East India Company men encountered it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, brought the word home, and it attached itself to a hot spirit drink that had nothing to do with palms.

A competing story credits an eighteenth-century Edinburgh physician named Todd. It is a neater tale, and it is generally considered the less likely of the two.

Either way, the drink itself is older than the word for it. Warming spirits with hot water and sugar was ordinary practice long before anyone called the result a toddy.

The medicinal reputation

No drink carries its medical claims more confidently, and the claims are half right.

The toddy has been prescribed for colds, sore throats and sleeplessness for as long as it has existed, and there is a defensible logic to each ingredient. Honey genuinely coats an irritated throat. Steam eases congestion. Lemon is mildly soothing and supplies a little vitamin C. Alcohol is a sedative and helps you sleep, which is when the body does its repair work.

What it does not do is treat the infection. A hot toddy is symptomatic relief, which is roughly what most over-the-counter cold remedies offer, delivered in a more agreeable form.

The reputation stuck partly because it is one of the few remedies people actively look forward to taking. Our alcohol-free version keeps the honey, lemon, ginger and steam and drops the part that is not doing the medical work.

From hearth to cocktail bar

The toddy was a domestic drink for most of its life. It became a bar drink twice.

The first time was in the nineteenth century, when American bartending codified the whole category of hot drinks. Jerry Thomas’s 1862 Bar-Tender’s Guide, the first cocktail book of its kind, includes hot toddies alongside slings, punches and flips, at a point when hot drinks were an ordinary part of a bar’s repertoire rather than a seasonal curiosity.

The second time was recent. The cocktail revival of the 2000s went back through those nineteenth-century books, and the toddy came back with them, this time as a template rather than a fixed recipe: swap the spirit, change the sweetener, infuse the water.

The variations worth knowing

Every version below is the same drink with one element changed, which is exactly why the format has lasted.

Hot Toddy

The reference: Scotch, honey, fresh lemon and hot water with a cinnamon stick and a few cloves. Eight minutes, no equipment beyond a kettle. Hot Toddy

Hot Maple Toddy

Rye or bourbon with maple syrup instead of honey, which pushes the drink towards vanilla and caramel. American in character and rounder than the Scotch original. Hot Maple Toddy

Hot Cognac Toddy

Cognac in place of whisky, with honey, lemon and a cinnamon stick. The most refined of the set and a better after-dinner drink than the Scotch version. Hot Cognac Toddy

Apple Brandy Hot Toddy

Apple brandy with honey, lemon and a slice of crisp apple. Mellower and distinctly autumnal, which makes it the toddy for October and November. Apple Brandy Hot Toddy

Hot Whisky Sour

The toddy pushed towards a proper cocktail: whisky, fresh lemon, honey syrup and hot water, finished with cinnamon and no egg. Sharper and more balanced than a standard toddy. Hot Whisky Sour

Sloe Gin Hot Toddy

Sloe gin with a splash of London Dry, lemon, honey, cinnamon and clove. Fruity and deep where the classic is sharp. Sloe Gin Hot Toddy

Alcohol-Free Hot Toddy

Strong black tea with honey, lemon, fresh ginger and cinnamon. The tea and ginger supply the warmth the whisky would have, which is why it works as its own drink rather than as a compromise. Alcohol-Free Hot Toddy

Why simplicity has lasted

The toddy has outlived far more sophisticated drinks for three unglamorous reasons.

Everything is already in the house. Spirit, honey, a lemon, a kettle. No syrups to make, no equipment, no shopping.

It cannot really be improved. Adding ingredients makes it something else rather than a better toddy. That is a rare property in a drink.

It is a template rather than a recipe. Any spirit, any sweetener, any hot liquid. The warm cocktails collection is largely toddy variations once you look at the structure.

The one thing that does need getting right is the water. Hot, not boiling, and poured over spirit in a warmed glass rather than heated with it. Our serving temperature guide explains why those few degrees decide whether the drink tastes of whisky or of hot lemon.