Mamie Taylor cocktail is an old-classic made based on scotch whiskey, lemon and ginger ale served in a tall highball. That’s a style of a drink called Bucks.

According to David A. Embury 1948 The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks the original Bucks was the Gin Bucks and it was made with ginger ale. From there it developed various other Bucks with bartenders switching ingredients and tuned other styles like a Rickey or a Collins.

The Bucks is featured as a quarter lemon squeezed into the glass and no sugar is added.

One of the first recipes of the Mamie Taylor cocktail can be traced in Jacob A. Grohusko’s 1908 Jacks Manual and he calls for applejack instead of whiskey, lemon, and ginger ale.

Jacob rectifies the recipe in his 1916 edition of Jacks’s Manual replacing the applejack for whiskey and the recipe has been followed since then.

You can also find the recipe in Oscar Haimo’s 1943 Cocktail Digest and Albert Stevens Crockett’s 1935 Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book.