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as far as I can tell, this article doesn't actually have anything to do with the drink.

as an aside, I do like a good cosmo, but it's not technically a cocktail anyway.

I feel like the subtitle would be a better HN title, since it describes the article as a book review.

A review of The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture by Orlando Figes

Er, what? It is an IBA official cocktail.

I understand most people use "cocktail" to be roughly synonymous with "mixed drink". but technically, cocktails are supposed to have liquor, sugar, and bitters (or ingredients that fill those roles). a cosmo has no bitters or similar ingredient. it's a highball.

As a descriptivist, I’ll accept that the cosmo is now considered a cocktail, or as an engineer I would just add orange bitters et voilà.

I was taught that the only "strong" rule about cocktails was that it had 3+ ingredients. Every other rule (like sweet + bitter) has notable exceptions, ie. drinks like the cosmo substitute a citrus for the bitters.

Plus, the whole sweet cocktail thing was a more modern invention of the prohibition era to cover up the taste of harsh spirits. Plenty of older cocktails around.

EDIT: It kinda feels like the rule about email address parsing. The only good rule is that it has an @ symbol.

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