The Sazerac stands as a monument to American cocktail culture, with origins in 1838 New Orleans. Antoine Amédée Peychaud, a Creole apothecary, began serving a proprietary blend of bitters mixed with French Cognac at his pharmacy at 437 Royal Street in the French Quarter. He served these medicinal tonics in a double-ended egg cup called a "coquetier" — Americans' mispronunciation of which may have given us the word "cocktail" itself, though this etymology is debated.

The drink took its current name from the Sazerac Coffee House, which opened in 1850 and began serving Peychaud's creation using Sazerac de Forge et Fils Cognac. The 1870s brought a pivotal transformation: the phylloxera epidemic devastated French vineyards, making Cognac scarce and expensive. American rye whiskey became the substitute, and the spirit swap stuck. Meanwhile, the absinthe component entered the recipe in the mid-to-late 19th century, adding the distinctive anise character that defines the modern cocktail. When absinthe was banned in the United States in 1912, New Orleans entrepreneur J. Marion Legendre created Herbsaint as a legal substitute.

In 2008, the Louisiana State Legislature officially named the Sazerac the cocktail of New Orleans, and it appears on UNESCO's list of the city's intangible cultural heritage. The drink's ritualistic preparation — the deliberate absinthe rinse, the careful muddling of sugar with Peychaud's bitters, the neat service without ice — connects every Sazerac drinker to nearly two centuries of New Orleans history and cocktail tradition.