Once the drink of choice of the decadent, gay young things of the 1920s and 30s, cocktails have made a huge comeback over the last few years.

Many hotels and fashionable restaurants offer an extensive list of these exotic drinks, featuring names like Cactus Jack, Purple Mist and Summer Breeze — and those are the sensible ones.

Like cooking, making the perfect cocktail is quite an art, requiring an innate sense of what flavours go together, in what combinations and in what quantities.

The idea is to form a smoothly balanced drink in which the ingredients complement each other rather than vie for attention.

Cocktail mixing is not simply throwing whatever drinks happen to be in your cupboard into a jug, stirring furiously, chucking in some ice and hoping for the best.

To make a good cocktail, you need to start with the right equipment. Almost mandatory is the shaker. This consists of a container (or cup), a strainer and a lid.

Ingredients are placed in the cup, along with crushed ice, the shaker is assembled, and then everything is given a good shake for around 20 seconds. The contents are then poured through the strainer into the waiting glass.

Shaking is particularly suitable for cocktails containing fruit or fruit juices. Any seeds or bits will be strained out, leaving behind just a smooth, flavour-packed liquid.

Adding ice to the shaker has the advantage of cooling the drink as well as mixing the ingredients and is famously the preferred method for making James Bond’s dry martini.

The addition of ice to the mixture allows the flavours and aromas of the alcoholic constituents to be released, resulting in a more mellow drink than you get from stirring. Shaking also adds air to a drink, giving it a lighter taste and ‘feel’ on the lips and palate.

However, stirring with a long-handled spoon is more appropriate for some drinks, in particular cocktails containing spirits and liqueurs which are not going to be chilled.

The result is a sophisticated, ‘grown up’ cocktail for the drinker who likes a more full-bodied flavour.

Other useful pieces of equipment include a jigger, (a measuring cup for getting those recipes exact), a strainer (needed when using fresh fruit), a sharp knife for slicing up fruit and a zester for cutting lemon and orange peel strips.

A blender is also useful, particularly for making fruit purees, and some types can double as ice crushers.

If you use a blender to pulp your fruit, add crushed ice or ice cream after whizzing the fruit and liquid. Start blending on a slow speed and then increase before straining the resulting mixture.

For a really spectacular cocktail, try going for a layered effect such as in the popular Tequila Sunrise. Layers are achieved by gently pouring the drink over the back of a spoon, taking care not to disturb the layer underneath.

Layering looks best if the constituent drinks are different colours, and you have to get the ingredients in the correct order. The heaviest, or densest, drinks will sink to the bottom, so put the ingredients in the glass in descending order of their density.

What determines this is the level of alcohol and sugar — those with the least alcohol and the most sugar being the most dense.

Fruit syrups usually go in first (no alcohol and lots of sugar), liqueurs will be next (cream liqueurs will be the heaviest) and finally spirits (little sugar and high alcohol content).

Then come the finishing touches. Adding fruit, coloured straws, umbrellas and so on
all add to the drama but sometimes less is more. Except in the case of ice.
Contrary to what you might think, a lot of ice is better than a little, as it will tend to stay frozen and therefore chill the drink effectively than just one or two cubes.

Home-made Pimm’s-style cocktail

2 parts gin
2 parts red vermouth
1 part orange liqueur (Cointreau for example)

Pour the ingredients into a jug in that order and stir, before adding lemonade to taste.
Serve with fruit, such as lemon, orange and apple, plus a slice of cucumber and garnish with fresh mint.

Tip 1: Add the lemonade just before serving and do not stir excessively or the fizz will be lost.

Tip 2: Don’t add ice to the drink or it will dilute it and avoid putting too much fruit in the jug because it will go soggy and sink. It is better to add the ice and fruit to the individual glasses.