When a historical recipe says only whiskey, later regional expectations cannot silently convert that evidence into rye, bourbon, or another specific style.
Preserve the printed ingredient identity. A likely regional default may be discussed as a qualified inference, not rewritten as the formula's explicit wording. Imbibe!, Meehan, and Raising the Bar now apply this rule across multiple recipe corpora; the Old Pal example also shows that changing Canadian whisky to American rye can require rebalancing.
Promoted to Established on 2026-08-27 after the complete Raising the Bar review supplied an additional independently located recipe-corpus application at PDF sheet 264. Historical attribution still requires the underlying primary source.
One durable idea in original wording, promoted only after full source review and deduplication.
Atomic idea
The Atomic Statement is complete, self-contained, and narrower than a manuscript claim.
Reasoning
Rationale and Implications explains the rule and its consequences. Review Notes preserve the present evidence boundary and next maturity condition.
Provenance
The Imbibe! Literature Note supplies provenance, with Excerpts and Citations providing the evidence chain. Direct Source is retained only for compatibility with the current architecture.
Connections
Approved History, Cocktails, and—where relevant—Styles Tags support retrieval. Related Claims are connected through reciprocal relations.
Maturity checklist
Imbibe! fresh evidence audit — October 1, 2026
PDF 257 reproduces generic whiskey; the rye preference on 258 is Wondrich's commentary. PDF 308 reports a selected early-Manhattan corpus in which most recipes leave whiskey unspecified and two specify bourbon. Record wording and regional inference separately; no market-share estimate follows. This strengthens the existing source-preservation rule without authenticating primary originals.
