A small Esquire clipping gives us a revealing look at a margarita recipe from December 1953. Under the heading “Potables,” the magazine presented the margarita as its “Drink of the Month.” The entry pairs a brief introduction with three ingredients and a compact set of directions. Its interest lies in those details: a dash of triple sec, a choice of lime or lemon, crushed ice, stirring, and a salted stemmed glass.
The Published Source
A photographic reproduction appears in Academia Patrón’s Mixología de México, printed page 12 (PDF page 14). The caption identifies “Painting the Town,” Esquire, December 1953, page 76. This reading is based on that reproduced clipping. Esquire’s archive lists the December 1953 issue; the complete original magazine page was not independently inspected for this article.
The opening identifies the drink with Mexico and describes its appearance and appeal. That language introduces the cocktail to the reader, but it supplies no inventor, creation date or account of how the recipe reached the magazine. The publication date gives us a documented example, rather than proof that this was the first margarita recipe ever printed.
The Ingredients as Printed
The recipe names tequila, triple sec, and lime or lemon juice. Its quantities are:
1 ounce of tequila
Dash of Triple Sec
Juice of half a lime or lemon
There is no named tequila brand or expression. The orange liqueur is triple sec, without a specified brand. Cointreau should therefore not be presented as a requirement of this particular source. The citrus choice is explicit: either lime or lemon. Reproducing the recipe with lime alone would narrow an option the printed entry leaves open.
Three Ingredients, Different Kinds of Measurement
The ounce of tequila, dash of liqueur and half fruit are not three measurements on a common volume scale. A dash has no assigned volume here, while half a lime or lemon identifies the fruit portion to juice. It does not state how much liquid that portion yields.
That distinction matters when comparing recipes. The clipping cannot supply an exact tequila-to-liqueur-to-citrus ratio without additional measurements. Nor does it establish a fixed finished drink volume. Keeping the dash and half-fruit wording visible preserves the historical recipe’s level of precision instead of making it appear more exact than it is.
Reading the Short Method
In paraphrase, the directions call for pouring the ingredients over crushed ice and stirring. They then describe moistening a stemmed glass’s rim with lemon or lime rind, coating the rim with salt, and pouring the drink into the glass.
The verbs and materials are worth noticing. The entry specifies stirring rather than shaking, crushed ice rather than an unspecified form of ice, and a stemmed serving glass. Citrus rind is used on the rim; it is not presented as a separate garnish. These are concrete details that can be retained without adding a more elaborate modern procedure.
The directions remain brief. They give no stirring time, measured dilution or explicit straining instruction. A reconstruction may need practical choices at those points, but those choices should be identified as part of that reconstruction. The same distinction applies to any measured interpretation of the dash or citrus yield.
A Useful Historical Comparison
The Picador entry in the 1937 Café Royal Cocktail Book offers a useful comparison. It names tequila, Cointreau, and fresh lime or lemon juice in fractional proportions, followed by the instruction to shake. Esquire’s entry uses a different drink name and a different way of specifying quantities and preparation.
Reading the two side by side reveals those documented differences. Shared ingredients alone do not show that one recipe directly influenced the other. Establishing that relationship, or measuring Esquire’s effect on the margarita’s popularity, would require evidence beyond the recipes themselves.
Explore the Recipe
For the recipe card and a closer look at interpreting its measures, see our Esquire 1953 margarita recipe. The historical ingredient quantities remain unchanged, including the unmeasured dash and juice from half a lime or lemon.
Correction: This article previously overstated the recipe’s publication priority and cultural impact. Those claims have been removed, and the method is now paraphrased from the reproduced clipping.
¡Salud!