Cocktail · Medium strength
Ramos Gin Fizz
Gin, citrus, cream, egg white, orange flower water — a cloud you drink through a straw.
How to order it: New Orleans, 1888. The legendary twelve-minute shake. Worth every second.
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The recipe
- 2 oz gin; ½ oz lemon; ½ oz lime
- ¾ oz simple; 1 egg white
- 1 oz cream; 3 drops orange flower water
- Shake forever (12 min tradition)
- Collins; top with soda; no ice
The story
Henry C. Ramos created his fizz at New Orleans's Imperial Cabinet Saloon in 1888, and it promptly became a civic institution and a labor problem. The drink demands extravagant shaking to emulsify cream, egg white, and orange flower water into its signature cloud, so Ramos employed teams of "shaker boys" passing tins down the line; during the 1915 Mardi Gras, the corps reportedly numbered thirty-five and still couldn't keep up. Governor Huey Long loved it enough to install a New Orleans bartender at his New York hotel in 1935 to make it properly. It endures because no shortcut has ever survived contact with it.
Adjacent pours