The legendary Cosmopolitan is a simple cocktail with a big history. It reached its height of popularity in the 1990s, when the HBO show “Sex and the City” was at its peak. The pink-hued Martini was a favorite of the characters on the show.

According to Gary Regan, the original Cosmopolitan was created by South Beach bartender Cheryl Cook. Eager to invent a new cocktail for the Martini glass, Cook riffed on the classic Kamikaze using a newly introduced citrus-flavored vodka plus a splash of cranberry juice.

There’s some debate about who created the original Cosmopolitan, whether it was Cook, Dale DeGroff (at New York City’s Rainbow Room) or Toby Cecchini, who devised a Cosmo in 1988 during his tenure at NYC’s Odeon. However, all agree that Cecchini popularized the vodka-and-cranberry ’Tini.

This recipe appeared as part of “Let’s Stop Pretending the Cosmopolitan Is a Terrible Drink. It Isn’t.“