Chill silver julep cups or 12 oz. glasses (I use pewter julep cups)

Pick from stem and place in cup 5 or 6 mint leaves

Muddle with:
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
1 teaspoon water

Fill cup with finely crushed ice. Pour in:
1 jigger bourbon

Stir energetically until the ice has dropped one or two inches and frost begins to appear. Then fill remainder of glass with crushed ice and pour in:
1 jigger bourbon

Decorate with sprigs of mint

Serve with short straws

Your maple syrup variation sounded good to me, so I tried the above recipe with 1 tsp syrup and then 2 tsp syrup (no water).

I feel that your recipe with half the bourbon and the extra water would be too watery and too sweet.

But the modified Joy of Cooking recipe with 2 tsp syrup is very good (one is not sweet enough; I’ll try 3 soon).

I’ll be traveling through Bourbon County, KY in a couple weeks and will update this after doing some taste tests there.