It’s just a few days before our fate is decided at the ballot box — or at least that’s usually the way it goes — and so I have a drink that is, cinematic and theatrical associations excluded, apolitical yet strong enough to help you stand up to the stress.

The provenance of this week’s cocktail, a sweetened-up martini of sorts, is not too obvious. There is a significantly different drink of the same name in Harry Craddock’s “The Savoy Cocktail Book,” which calls for a now mostly unavailable sweetish fortified wine called Caperitif. (A revival of the product seems to have been attempted, however, so that may change.) These days, that Cabaret cocktail is sometimes made with Dubonnet Blanc or Lillet Blanc, so we may give it a shot at some point.

The drink will be making now, however, is an apparent adaptation/reboot that comes from Robert Hess’s “The Essential Cocktail Guide.” While Hess has also promoted a smaller version of the cocktail on his online video channel, and there are a few other versions of it online, I’m partial to the recipe in the book. It’s a bigger, bolder tipple and quite user friendly. It also gives us a reminder that Benedictine is good for something other than just going halfies with brandy.

The Cabaret

1 1/2 ounces gin
1 ounce dry vermouth
1/2 ounce Benedictine
2 dashes aromatic bitters (Angostura, usually)
1 cocktail cherry (delightful garnish)

Combine the liquid ingredients in a mixing glass or cocktail shaker. Stir or shake according to your preference and strain into a mixing glass. Add the cherry and reflect on the fact that life is probably not a cabaret, but it’s a good drink, a good movie and probably a good play if we ever get around to seeing it.

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Although it has only one sweet liquid ingredient, and not in a very large proportion, this is a drink that is quite sweet to most palettes, but not excessively so. Herbal flavors from the gin and vermouth also tend to predominate.

Shaken or stirred, those herbaceous notes definitely carried the day when I used Tanqueray and Noilly Pratt Extra Dry. Switching to value-priced Gordon’s Gin and Fee Brother’s Aromatic Bitters instead of Angostura produced a milder version that I liked a lot. However, my in-house guinea pig strongly preferred the earlier version. So, go figure.

The most dramatic difference, however, was using Bols Genever instead of standard dry gin. Since it’s somewhere between a regular gin and whiskey in terms of sweetness, it’s not surprising that this was the sweetest version of the drink I had. Some might find that version of the Cabaret actually too sweet. For me, the gin-like herbal flavors kept it from going off the rails, much as I hope we don’t go off the rails on Tuesday night.