Rock and Rye

1. Stir the sugar and salt with 1 cup of water in a small saucepan and simmer over medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves and becomes syrupy, about 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, slice off and reserve the top and bottom of the orange. Cut the orange into ½-inch-thick slices and then cut into half-moons.

3. Reduce the heat under the pan to medium and add the orange half-moons along with the top and bottom slices (the syrup should just barely bubble around the slices at first). Simmer, flipping the slices once or twice as the froth builds, until a nice roasted-orange aroma develops and the flesh has a withered look, about 25 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes; then, holding back the candied orange with a wooden spoon, pour the syrup into a large heatproof pitcher. You should have approximately ½ cup orange syrup. Let the candied orange cool in the pan.

4. Pour ½ cup rye from the bottle and reserve for another use; then decant the remainder of the rye into the pitcher with the orange syrup, stirring to dissolve the syrup in the liquor. When the candied orange is cool enough to touch, feed 2 or 3 slices—reserve the remainder for another use, such as garnishing a ½-cup goblet of rye on the rocks—through the neck of the rye bottle (they’ll be nice and pliable, and will squeeze through with a firm poke). Pour the flavored rye back into the bottle using a funnel. The liqueur will keep for months at room temperature.

From “Kitchen Chronicles.”

Notes & tips

Charlestonians have developed an affinity for the syrupy, soul-warming texture of a liqueur, especially in the chill of winter, out on the hunt or working on the water. Former game warden Benjamin Moise recounted for us a distinctive New Year’s tradition he kept back in the 1970s and ’80s with a commercial rye-based liqueur seasoned with orange, called Mr. Boston Rock & Rye, made in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston until 1986 (the brand and the beverage continues, now owned by Sazerac Company and produced in Owensboro, Kentucky).

Moise and the Magwood family owned adjacent hum- mock islands—sandy mid-marsh sites for fishing shacks, with a palmetto tree, maybe a stunted cedar or live oak, and not much more—behind an oceanfront barrier island north of Charleston. And as Moise tells it, in early January, the Magwoods, famous locally as commercial oystermen and shrimpers (see page 138), put on a “Mullet Hunt and Rock & Rye Festival,” a gathering of about fifteen hardy friends and their motorboats on the Magwoods’ Little Bull Island.

“The Magwood house was built of scrap timber salvaged from shipwrecks, and I remember they had an eight-foot, black-iron wood stove that made the most delicious heat in that low-ceiling thing in winter,” said Moise. “Guys would tie up at the back dock, and Andrew Magwood would put on an oyster roast for us. Then he’d go out to the water with a cast net and come back with a bunch of mullet. He’d scale them, roll them in cornmeal, and put ’em in a pan on the stove. A pot of grits had been bubbling all night long, and we’d eat fried fresh mullet, grits, and eggs—it was the best breakfast ever. Then we’d repair to the small boats and hit the beach, bringing Old Mr. Boston Rock & Rye to use as antifreeze.”

The tradition ended in 1989, when Hurricane Hugo swept a twenty-foot-high wall of water through the islands, clearing them of everything except a few cedar pilings. Even the heavy iron stove disappeared.

Part of the mystique of commercial Rock & Rye, to this day, is the slice of crystallized orange in the bottom of the bottle. We resolved to bring back the tradition, since the idea of pairing orange with spicy rye whiskey in a winter warmer seems festive and logical. In developing our version, we dialed back the sweetness slightly and boosted the savory rye flavor. Our Rock and Rye is a nice sip on ice, year-round, and a terrific drizzle on vanilla ice cream. But without a doubt, it reaches its highest calling when consumed as a chaser on a cold day, following smoked, pickled, or fried fish.