Cook With What You Have cooking, vintage cocktails, food waste.

Practical writing on the things Speakeater is built around. New posts roughly once a week.

• Cocktails · Brandy
  May 7, 2026 · 12 min read

  23 brandy cocktails you can pour tonight

  The bottle in everyone's cabinet. Twenty-three drinks ranked by how little you have to add to it: Brandy Crusta, Sidecar, Vieux Carré, the Wisconsin Brandy Old Fashioned, Pisco Sour, plus the substitution table for when you're out of cognac.

• Cook With What You Have · Cooking
  April 28, 2026 · 7 min read

  What to cook with what you have

  Stop searching recipes, start surveying what you own. The fridge inventory is the recipe, three pantry combinations that always work, and how to actually pull this off Tuesday night.

• Cocktails · Pre-prohibition
  April 28, 2026 · 9 min read

  What the bartenders of 1860 to 1920 were actually drinking

  The five cocktail manuscripts that matter, three drinks worth resurrecting (Saratoga Brace Up, Tomahawk Cooler, the original Aviation), and why the modern cocktail canon got compressed.

• Cook With What You Have · Quick dinners
  April 28, 2026 · 6 min read

  15 pantry meals that need zero shopping

  The honest list. 15 dinners from staples already in your kitchen, soy butter rice, aglio e olio, white bean toast, frozen dumpling soup, and more. No store run, no recipe searching.