Pegu Club, Rangoon, ~1922.
| 1½ oz · 45 ml | GIN | 40 % |
| ¾ oz · 22 ml | ORANGE CURACAO | 40 % |
| ¾ oz · 22 ml | LIME JUICE | |
| 1 dash | ANGOSTURA BITTERS | 44 % |
| 1 dash | ORANGE BITTERS | 25 % |
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
| Pre-batch | 3.06 oz mixed with ice, 0.92 oz of it pure alcohol |
|---|---|
| Melt | Shaken: +20 % of the pre-batch, +0.61 oz of water |
| Served | 3.06 + 0.61 = 3.67 oz in the glass |
| Strength | 0.92 ÷ 3.67 = 25.1 % ABV as served |
| Ethanol | 0.92 oz × 29.57 ml × 0.789 g/ml = 21 g · about 150 kcal from the alcohol alone |
FROM GIN
The pine note in juniper berries, and the reason gin tastes like a forest. Co-distilled with the spirit during production. Found in actual pine trees, rosemary, basil, and a good London Dry. The "Christmas tree" smell of gin and the smell of a forest floor share a single molecule.
ALSO IN Negroni · Martini · Gimlet · Gin & Tonic · Aviation · Corpse Reviver #2 · French 75 · Bramble
FROM CURAÇAO · citrus peel oil
An orange rind, squeezed, throws a spray that catches the light. That's d-limonene boiling off. It's roughly 95% of orange peel oil by mass, and the molecule that puts the "orange" in orange anything. Used industrially as a green solvent because the chemistry that dissolves citrus oils also dissolves greasy machinery. The expressed-peel garnish on a cocktail is delivering vaporized limonene to the rim of the glass.
ALSO IN Old Fashioned · Martini · Margarita · Gin & Tonic · Cosmopolitan · Mai Tai · Piña Colada · Hemingway Daiquiri
FROM LIME · the lemon aroma
Lemon's defining note: technically a mix of two geometric isomers (geranial and neral) that read as the same aroma to the nose. Lemon peel, lemongrass, lemon verbena, and Indian chai all carry it. In cocktails it's what a lemon twist contributes that lemon juice can't: the volatile expressed from the oil glands, not the acid from the pulp.
ALSO IN Margarita · Mojito · Daiquiri · Whiskey Sour · Gimlet · Moscow Mule · Paper Plane · Aviation
Gin, orange curaçao, lime and two bitters. Alpha-pinene from gin and d-limonene from curaçao stack into a two-layered pine-and-citrus nose, and Angostura's bark and clove backbone adds depth.
Created at the Pegu Club, the British officers' bar in colonial Rangoon (modern Yangon, Myanmar). Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book describes it as the club's favorite, 'one that has travelled, and is asked for, round the world.' The drink fell into obscurity after Burmese independence; Audrey Saunders revived it as the namesake of her acclaimed Manhattan bar Pegu Club, which ran from 2005 to 2020.
