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Recipe:

• 2 oz. rye whiskey or Bourbon
• splash of simple syrup or 1 cube sugar and just enough water to dissolve it
• 2 dashes bitters
• Old Fashioned glass

1. Place sugar (or syrup), bitters, and water in old-fashioned glass
2. Crush sugar if needed and coat glass
3. Add 2-3 cubes ice and whiskey
4. Garnish with twist

Most modern recipes top off an Old Fashioned cocktail with soda water, thus making it a highball. Purists decry this practice, and insist that soda water is never permitted in a true Old Fashioned cocktail.

Many bartenders add fruit, typically an orange slice, and muddle it with the sugar before adding the whiskey. This practice likely began during Prohibition as a means of covering the taste of poor alcohol. As such it is now uneccesary and produces a vastly different beverage worthy of a different name.

An 1895 recipe specifies the following: Dissolve a small lump of sugar with a little water in a whiskey-glass; add two dashes Angostura bitters, a small piece ice, a piece lemon-peel, one jigger whiskey. Mix with small bar-spoon and serve, leaving spoon in glass.

Renewing an Old Fashion discusses the history of this cocktail in detail, specifically focusing on the issue of whether to add soda water to the cocktail or not.

See also List of cocktails.