If you're getting ready to throw your first martini cocktail party and want to make it a real success, you need to make sure you've got everything ready and on-hand, including your martini glasses, your cocktail shaker, and appropriate barware, from bottle openers and mini-measures, to corkscrews, citrus knives and the star of the show: alcohol.

You'll also want to take time to assemble a variety of martini recipes for all your favorite variations: an apple martini recipe, a Cosmopolitan martini recipe, a dirty martini recipe… and (if you're really on the cutting edge of martini recipes), you'll have a sinfully sweet, mouthwatering special Chocolate martini recipe ready to go.

As you're pulling your cocktail party martini recipes, barware and ingredients together, you'll want to answer the martini recipe question that's #1 in the mind of every cocktail party host or hostess: onion or olive?

Now, if you're just serving chocolate martinis or apple martinis, the answer to this hotly discussed martini recipe question is pretty obvious -- neither! But what if you're serving a variety of martini recipes? What's the etiquette? Do you garnish with onions? Olives? Both?

Let's start with a martini recipe basic. Today's martini recipes are based on this basic "formula": two and one half ounces of gin to a half ounce of dry vermouth. These martini recipe basics are stirred with crushed ice and then strained into a chilled cocktail party glass.

Self-proclaimed cocktail party "experts" may tell you differently, but a purist knows that genuine martini recipes always specify that the drink be served "straight up" (without ice) and never "on the rocks."

Most martini recipes call for garnishing the drink with an olive. A twist (lemon rind) may also be part of the presentation. Other martini recipes call for cocktail onions. The chief advantage of an olive is that it adds salt to the drink. (Unlike olives used in cooking, bar olives for martini recipes are usually preserved in brine).

For cocktail party "elite" martini drinkers, the garnish called for in martini recipes transforms a simple martini into a whole new animal. To these members of the Martini Recipes Police, martini recipes that are garnished with onions instead of olives aren't really Martinis at all…they're called Gibsons.

Vodka martini recipes are the most common variation on traditional martini recipes. And if you garnish your Vodka Martini with an onion, it becomes a Vodka Gibson.

So, onion or olive? Martini or Gibson? It's simply a matter of personal taste…and the martini recipes that will be used at your cocktail party.