Harry's New York Bar, Paris, 1929.
| 1½ oz · 45 ml | GIN | 40 % |
| ¾ oz · 22 ml | COINTREAU | 40 % |
| ¾ oz · 22 ml | LEMON JUICE | |
| 1 splash | EGG WHITE |
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
1 oz taken as 30 ml in the metric column.
| Pre-batch | 3.25 oz mixed with ice, 0.9 oz of it pure alcohol |
|---|---|
| Melt | Shaken: +20 % of the pre-batch, +0.65 oz of water |
| Served | 3.25 + 0.65 = 3.9 oz in the glass |
| Strength | 0.9 ÷ 3.9 = 23.1 % ABV as served |
| Ethanol | 0.9 oz × 29.57 ml × 0.789 g/ml = 21 g · about 147 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 COINTREAU · 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 LEMON · 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, Cointreau, lemon and egg white. The dry shake denatures egg-white proteins into a stable foam cap that traps aromatic volatiles. Alpha-pinene from the gin and d-limonene from the Cointreau concentrate in the foam and release on the first sip. ABV is about 25%.
Harry MacElhone is credited with the modern White Lady at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in 1929, reworking his 1919 recipe from Ciro's Club in London, which used crème de menthe instead of gin. Harry Craddock printed the gin version in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book; the egg white came later, by the 1946 Stork Club Bar Book. Some accounts say it was named for Zelda Fitzgerald's platinum hair. The egg white isn't optional; without it the drink reads as a sharper, drier Sidecar variant.
