The History of the Shirley Temple (Mocktail)

The Shirley Temple is arguably the world’s most famous mocktail. It was created for its namesake, child star Shirley Temple. According to the story, Temple was out with her parents at a restaurant and the adults were drinking Old Fashioned cocktails. Jealous of the maraschino cherry in each of their drinks, Temple began whining. An enterprising bartender mixed up an alcohol-free version of the drink to placate the young star, thus creating the Shirley Temple. There is some debate over where exactly the creation of the drink took place — some sources say it was Chasen’s in Hollywood, others say it was the Brown Derby restaurant (also in Hollywood), while still others claim it was Honolulu's Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The drink’s ingredients are also disputed. While grenadine and a maraschino cherry are generally considered critical to the recipe, there is a fair amount of disagreement over the soda. Some versions use ginger ale, while others use a lemon-lime soda like Sprite, and still others use a mix of both. Since Sprite wasn’t invented until 1959, the original Shirley Temple was likely made with either ginger ale or a mix of ginger ale and an older lemon-lime soda that would have been around at the time, such as 7UP. Today, the ingredients used tend to be split along regional lines, with Shirley Temples made on the East Coast often using ginger ale and those mixed in the Midwest often using Sprite. Shirley Temple herself fought to keep companies from making money off the drink named after her and won two lawsuits to keep the Shirley Temple from being made into a bottled soda. Today, the Shirley Temple remains massively popular among children and there is even an adult version of the mocktail that adds alcohol to the recipe.