According to a common opinion, one of the most famous alcohol cocktails owes its name to the British queen of the 16th century. We checked how reasonable it is.

This version in different sources is represented in different ways. For example, lenta.ru Writes: “The origin of the name of the cocktail is also ambiguous. “Officially” is associated with the name of the English Queen Maria I Tudor. This ruler was famous for cruel reprisals and earned the nickname of the bloody Mary during her life, in the 16th century. Obviously, a person who, in the 20th century, gave this name a cocktail, was familiar with the nickname at least as a stable phrase. ” "Arguments and Facts" a little more categorical: “A combination of vodka and tomato juice with the addition of various ingredients appeared in the first third of the 20th century, almost 400 years after the death of a woman whose name and deeds gave the name a bloody-red color cocktail.” In turn, the website of the chain of stores "Red and White" reports: “According to legend, the cocktail is named after the first English Queen Maria I Tudor. For cruel reprisals against the Protestants, she received the nickname Bloody Mary. ”

Maria I Tudor, daughter of King Henry VIII, I took it The British throne in 1553. For five years of his reign, the new queen I tried Restore Catholicism in England, which resulted in numerous executions and persecution of Protestants. For this, Maria Tudor received the nickname Bloody Mary.

Information about where and when for the first time prepared a cocktail of vodka and tomato juice, varies. Representatives of the famous Harry's New York Bar in Paris They saythat the “bloody Mary” was first invented in their institution in 1921. According to the manager of Bar Alena da Silva, this cocktail was prepared for the company Fernan Pit Petio. At the same time, one of the clients, seeing the drink, exclaimed: "He looks like my girlfriend, whom I met in a cabaret." That cabaret was called Bucket of Blood (“Blue of Blood”), and the girl was called Mary.

How reports “The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drinks in America”, after the cancellation of the Sacle Law in the United States in 1933, Petio moved there and began working in the King Cole Bar under the New York Hotel St. Regis. There he finalized the recipe for his cocktail, which previously prepared with simple mixing of vodka and tomato juice. When preparing an updated version to the shaker, they also began to add lemon juice and Voster sauce.

According to alternative Versions, cocktail first appeared in another New York institution-bar 21 Club. According to one of them, the recipe was invented in 1934 by the bartender Henry Zbikevich, according to the other - a frequent guest of the bar, actor and comedian George Jessel. However, later Petio refuted These statements, paying attention to the fact that Jessel simply mixed vodka and tomato juice, while its final recipe was more complicated.

The first written fixations of the recipe dates back to the end of the 1930s. In the collection Floridita Cocktails (1939) a cocktail, similar in ingredients and the method of preparation with the Bloody Mary, received The name Mary Rose. Life magazine in its note in 1942 He called it A cocktail in half made of vodka and tomato juice with the addition of lemon, a “red hammer” (Red Hammer). In the King Cole bar, it still called "Red perch" (Red Snapper). Apparently, the British queen at the time when the cocktail became popular, in this context is not mentioned.

However, there are more extravagant versions of how the name “Bloody Mary” happened. For example, the CHICAGO Tribune reporter Conducted such:

in honor of the stars of silent cinema Mary Pickford;
In honor of the girl of the bartender who was constantly late (the word Bloody in English can use for expressing anger or discontent in about the same meaning as the Russian “damn”);
In honor of the Bucket of Blood club in Chicago, where journalists loved to poison their liver in the 1920s (it is funny that the club in Chicago for some reason is called the same as the Harry's New York Bar Kabaret in Paris).

The author of one culinary book is claimsthat Bloody Mary is the name of Vladimir. That was the name of the vodka magnate Smirnoff, whose products were often used in the preparation of a cocktail.

Thus, the version that the cocktail received its name in honor of Maria Tudor, if it is given, then as one of the possible, and often without links to sources. The establishments that compete for the right to be considered the “homeland” of the “bloody Mary”, either give other explanations, or do not comment on this issue at all. In the 1930s and 1940s, as far as possible by the discovered sources, other names and/or comments on them were popular. However, probably neither confirm nor refute the connection of the British queen and a popular cocktail today.