| Cocktail | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Cocktail |
| Base spirit | |
| Served | Straight up: chilled, without ice |
| Standard garnish | Cherry |
| Standard drinkware |  |
| Commonly used ingredients | |
| Preparation | Shake ingredients very well with ice and strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry. |
The pink lady is a classic gin-based cocktail with a long history. Its pink color comes from grenadine.
The exact ingredients for the pink lady vary, but all variations have the use of gin, grenadine, and egg white in common. [1] In its most basic form, the pink lady consists of just these three ingredients. According to the Cafe Royal Cocktail Book of 1937, it is made with a glass of gin, a tablespoon of grenadine, and the white of one egg, shaken and strained into a glass. [2]
Often lemon juice is added to the basic form. Another creamier version of the pink lady that has been around at least since the 1920s adds sweet cream to the basic form. In New Orleans, this version was also known as pink shimmy. In some recipes, the cream is not added to the basic form, but simply replaces the egg white, and sometimes lemon juice is added as well. [3]
Usually the ingredients for any of the versions are shaken over ice, and after straining it into a glass, the cocktail might be garnished with a cherry. [4]
The exact origin of the pink lady is not known for sure. Occasionally its invention is attributed to the interior architect and prominent society figure Elsie de Wolfe (1865–1950), but the recipe associated with her nevertheless clearly differs from the common recipes for the pink lady. [5] The name of the cocktail itself is sometimes said to be taken from the 1911 Broadway musical by Ivan Caryll of the same name, [6] or named in the honour of its star Hazel Dawn [7] [8] who was known as "The Pink Lady". [9] During the prohibition era (1920–1933) the cocktail was already widely known. In those years it was a popular drink at the Southern Yacht Club in New Orleans, where it was offered under the name pink shimmy as well. Its recipe was due to Armond Schroeder, an assistant manager at the club. [10] The popularity of the pink lady might partially be explained by the frequently poor quality of gin during the prohibition era, due to which there was a need to mask the gin's bad taste. [11]
At the latest in the 1930s the pink lady started to acquire the image of a typical "female" or "girly" drink due to its name and sweet creamy flavor usually associated with a woman's taste in publications like Esquire's Handbook for Hosts (1949). It is said of the Hollywood star and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, that she used to drink a pink lady before a meal. [12] [13] Subsequently, the cocktail fell out of favour with male cocktail critics, who were put off by its alleged "female" nature. [14] The writer and bartender Jack Townsend speculated in his publication The Bartender's Book (1951) that the very non-threatening appearance of the pink lady may have appealed to women who did not have much experience with alcohol. [15] At one point the pink lady ended up on Esquire's list of the ten worst cocktails. [11]
The Tom Collins is a Collins cocktail made from gin, lemon juice, sugar, and carbonated water. First memorialized in writing in 1876 by Jerry Thomas, "the father of American mixology", this "gin and sparkling lemonade" drink is typically served in a Collins glass over ice. A non-alcoholic "Collins mix" mixer is produced, enjoyed by some as a soft drink.
The Singapore sling is a gin-based sling cocktail from Singapore. This long drink was developed sometime before 1915 by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, Singapore. It was initially called the gin sling.
A cosmopolitan, or, informally, a cosmo, is a cocktail made with vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and freshly squeezed or sweetened lime juice.
A stinger is a duo cocktail made by adding crème de menthe to brandy. The cocktail's origins can be traced to the United States in the 1890s, and the beverage remained widely popular in America until the 1970s. It was seen as a drink of the upper class, and has had a somewhat wide cultural impact.
A sour is a traditional family of mixed drinks. Sours belong to one of the old families of original cocktails and are described by Jerry Thomas in his 1862 book How to Mix Drinks.
White lady is a classic cocktail that is made with gin, cointreau or Triple Sec, fresh lemon juice and an optional egg white. It belongs to the sidecar family, made with gin in place of brandy. The cocktail sometimes also includes additional ingredients, for example egg white, sugar, cream, or creme de menthe.
A Scorpion Bowl is a communally shared alcoholic tiki drink served in a large ceramic bowl traditionally decorated with wahine or hula-girl island scenes and meant to be drunk through long straws. Bowl shapes and decorations can vary considerably. Starting off as a single-serve drink known as the Scorpion cocktail, its immense popularity as a bowl drink in tiki culture is attributed to Trader Vic.
The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks is a book about cocktails by David A. Embury, first published in 1948. The book is noteworthy for its witty, highly opinionated and conversational tone, as well as its categorization of cocktails into two main types: aromatic and sour; its categorization of ingredients into three categories: the base, modifying agents, and special flavorings and coloring agents; and its 1:2:8 ratio for sour type cocktails.
The brandy daisy is a cocktail which first gained popularity in the late 19th century. One of the earliest known recipes was published in 1876 in the second edition of Jerry Thomas's The Bartenders Guide or How To Mix Drinks: The Bon-Vivants Companion:
Fill glass half full of shaved ice. Shake well and strain into a glass, and fill up with Seltzer water from a syphon.
A "fizz" is a mixed drink variation on the older sours family of cocktail. Its defining features are an acidic juice and carbonated water. It typically includes gin or rum as its alcoholic ingredient.
The 20th century is a cocktail created in 1937 by a British bartender named C.A. Tuck, and named in honor of the celebrated 20th Century Limited train which ran between New York City and Chicago from 1902 until 1967. The recipe was first published in 1937 in the Café Royal Cocktail Book by William J Tarling, President of the United Kingdom Bartenders' Guild and head bartender at the Café Royal.
A sea breeze is a cocktail containing vodka with cranberry juice and grapefruit juice. The cocktail is usually consumed during summer months. The drink may be shaken in order to create a foamy surface. It is considered an IBA Official Cocktail.
The Last Word is a gin-based cocktail originating at the Detroit Athletic Club in the 1910s, shortly before the start of Prohibition. After a long period of obscurity, it enjoyed a renewed popularity in the early 2000s when it was introduced at the Zig Zag Café in Seattle.
The aviation is a cocktail made with gin, maraschino liqueur, crème de violette and lemon juice. Some recipes omit the crème de violette. It is served straight up, in a cocktail glass.
A Clover Club cocktail is a shaken cocktail consisting of gin, lemon juice, raspberry syrup, and egg white. The egg white acts as an emulsifier, forming the drink's characteristic foamy head.
The corpse reviver family of named cocktails are sometimes drunk as alcoholic hangover tongue-in-cheek "cures", of potency or characteristics to be able to revive even a dead person. Some corpse reviver cocktail recipes have been lost to time, but several variations commonly thought to be tied to the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel remain, especially those espoused by Harry Craddock that originally date back to at least 1930 and are still being made. Many "reviver" variations exist and the word is sometimes used as a generic moniker for any morning-after cocktail, also known as a "hair of the dog".
The doctor cocktail is a pre-prohibition era cocktail that traces in drink guides to as far back as 1917, when it appeared in Hugo R. Ensslin's Recipes for Mixed Drinks. As originally described the cocktail called simply for Swedish Punsch mixed with lime juice.
A whiskey cocktail is a cocktail that includes whiskey. Although whiskey is often served neat or on the rocks, it is used in many classic cocktails such as the Old Fashioned, Manhattan, and Julep. Some specifically call for Scotch whisky or bourbon whiskey.
