Happy (Almost) Valentine’s Day. Let’s Tour the History of the Pink Lady.

…And then let’s make an improved version of this not-quite-classic gin sour.

Happy (almost) Valentine’s Day!

This year, consider making your date — or yourself — a Pink Lady. It’s a not-quite-classic gin-and-apple brandy sour that takes a bit of time and effort, but is lovely, comforting, and satisfying when made well. 

It’s not actually all that pink in color, at least in my favorite renditions, but it will brighten the mood of any evening: Like a bouquet of roses, it’s a cocktail that shows you’re willing to make an effort.

The Pink Lady dates back to the 1910s, and in the early days, multiple cocktails consisting of various ingredients took the name. But the drink as we know it today comes from the recipe published by Jaques Straub in 1913, consisting of gin, apple brandy (or applejack), citrus, and grenadine. As others have remarked, it was basically a Jack Rose with the addition of some gin. Eventually, dairy products such as cream and egg made their way into the mix. The cream is gone from most renditions now, but the egg white remains. Contemporary versions read a bit like mashups of the Jack Rose and fruity, eggy gin sours like the Clover Club: It’s frothy, light, and somewhat sweet, but with a boozy, complex backbone to keep it interesting. 

As David Wondrich wrote in his entry on the drink in The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, the Pink Lady has “never quite made it into the cocktail renaissance’s list of approved drinks.” That omission, he says, is “regrettable.” Quite so.

But just because the drink never became the next big thing amongst cocktail aficionados doesn’t mean you should write it off: While it’s slightly difficult to make well, and it requires preparing several homemade ingredients, it’s delicious when you get it right. If you like gin and/or brandy sours, it’s a drink you should try at least once. 

It’s also a drink with a fascinating history: Throughout the 1900s, Pink Lady recipes evolved quite dramatically, with gin and grenadine as the only real constants. Today, specifications for the drink still vary: If you Google around for recipes, you’ll find that most have settled into something that resembles a lightly modified version of the original, but even still, proportions and particulars change from recipe to recipe. 

Sadly, many of the now-standard versions you’ll find online today are, to my taste, not very good — they’re tart, alcoholic, and punchy, lacking the softly boozy, gently tangy sweetness of a great sour. Fortunately, this a drink that has been successfully rescued by some great cocktail minds. 

So for this not-quite Valentine’s Day newsletter, we’re going to survey various recipes for the Pink Lady as they appeared from the middle of the 20th century until now, tracing the evolution of the drink over more than a hundred years. And then we’re going to look at some tweaks to the formula that vastly improve the drink. 

Balance of Power

When a Pink Lady doesn’t work, the problem is almost always the same: poor balance.

Cocktails, as I have often written, are best understood as spirits balanced between sweet and bitter or sweet and sour. That’s a simplified model, of course, and some are more complex. But that basic idea — strong liquor balanced between sweet and sour or sweet and bitter — is at the core of most common cocktail structures. 

The Pink Lady, of course, is a sour-style cocktail, meaning it employs lemon or lime juice, balanced with some sort of sweetener — in this case, grenadine, and in some modern recipes, some other type of syrup as well. 

Grenadine is often thought of as a bright red cherry syrup, but in fact, good grenadine is a syrup made from a mix of sugar and pomegranate juice. To make a good Pink Lady, you’ll need to make your own grenadine. We’ve done this before, though not for several years. But for those who haven’t tried it, don’t be intimidated. It takes a few minutes, but it’s a fun and easy project.

The sweet element or elements augment the boozy base and offset the sour, which comes from either lemon or lime juice, depending on the recipe. 

And thus when this drink goes wrong, it’s almost always because it’s either too sweet or too tart, and in some cases too boozy as well. In a bad Pink Lady, the balance — the delicate interplay between strong, sweet, and sour — is off. 

The history of the Pink Lady is thus a history of attempts to balance the drink, some more successful than others. 

~Record Scratch~ You’re Probably Wondering How I Got Here

Let’s start with the first published appearance of the gin-and-brandy version of the Pink Lady, in Straub’s 1913 book, Manual of Mixed Drinks, where it took the following form: 

Pink Lady Cocktail

• ½ Jigger Lime Juice

• ½ Jigger Gin

• ½ Jigger Apple Jack 

• 5 Dashes Grenadine

Shake well. 

Like other recipes from the era, Straub’s version of the cocktail did not use standard measurements, calling for “Jiggers” rather than ounces. But the equal-parts proportions make this relatively easy to translate into contemporary measurements. A replica version today would employ an ounce each of lime juice, gin, and apple jack or apple brandy, plus a teaspoon or so of grenadine. 

Try shaking up a version of this drink, if only research purposes. You’ll find it’s tart and aggressive, with a light body, and the citrus bulldozing the sweetness from the grenadine. Moreover, because the citrus and sweetener make up a relatively modest share of the drink — barely more than a third, combined — the drink is too boozy as well. It’s certainly a good idea for a cocktail. The flavors obviously play well together. But as published, it’s not a very good drink. 

Flash forward to 1948 and newsletter favorite David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, and you have a drink that is, on the one hand, recognizably a Pink Lady, but which is also considerably altered. 

Embury’s spec looks like this:

Pink Lady (Embury)

• 1 part Grenadine

• 2 parts Lemon or Lime Juice

• 2 parts Apple Brandy

• 6 parts Gin

• ½ egg white (technically Embury called for the white from one egg for every two drinks)

Immediately, several differences should jump out: First, Embury allows for either lemon or lime juice, introducing a choice amongst citrus. Second, he’s reoriented the boozy spirit base toward gin rather than Straub’s equal parts version. Second, the sour-to-sweet ratio is a little closer, with only two parts citrus to one part grenadine. 

But what I really want you to focus on is the overall ratio of strong (combined booze/gin and brandy) to sweet (grenadine) to sour (citrus). Embury’s cocktails were notoriously dry, and this is no exception: This is essentially an 8:1:2 sour.

I am second to few in my admiration for Embury, but this isn’t just a little bit too tart — it’s also way too strong. 

Other mid-century recipes were even weirder, and devolved even further from the original: I recently acquired a copy of Fleischmann’s Mixer’s Manual, a small cocktail recipe pamphlet from the Fleischmann Distilling Corporation, a historic liquor brand. My printing of the pamphlet isn’t dated, but it looks to be from the 1950s or perhaps the early 1960s, and it includes a recipe for the Pink Lady.

But that recipe contains no brandy or citrus at all. Instead, it calls for a mix of “¼ Grenadine, ¾ Fleischmann’s Gin, White of 1 egg” — and that’s it. 

You can see the lineage back to Straub’s recipe, but this is a substantially different drink, almost to the point where one might reasonably argue that it’s no longer a Pink Lady. 

Obviously, in the interest of cocktail science, I had to try one.

The version of the drink printed in the pamphlet is…not exactly good, and I can only recommend it as a historical curiosity. But it’s not awful either. With the sour element completely omitted, it’s not too tart. The egg white, meanwhile, softens the gin and grenadine pairing. It’s not going to win any awards for excellence, but there’s something generally agreeable about the underlying formula: booze, egg, and syrup rarely go totally wrong. 

It’s very nearly a flip — the whole-egg cocktails we sometimes make during the holidays. In fact, if you bumped up the grenadine portaion and swapped in a whole egg for egg white, you would have a pretty decent Gin Flip. 

By the end of the 1960s, other forms of the drink were in circulation. In the 1968 Time Life Foods of the World Wines and Spirits supplement, the drink ingredients are listed as follows:

Pink Lady (1960s Time Life)

• ½ ounce fresh lemon juice

• 2 ½ ounces gin

• 1 teaspoon grenadine

• 1 egg white

• A dash of heavy cream 

Cream! Two and a half ounces of gin! And, as with the Fleischmann's pamphlet, no apple brandy to be found. The drink has evolved and iterated yet again. 

Now we have a drink that is eggy and thick, veering almost in the direction of eggnog thanks to the cream — but still not sweet enough, and still far too strong. 

A little more than a decade later, in 1981, the drink would be simplified and reduced, at least according to the recipe in Ed Bergman’s Professional Skills of Bartending, a manual intended for pro bartenders of the era.

Pink Lady (1981 bartender’s edition)

• 1 ounce gin

• ½ ounce lemon mix 

• ½ ounce cream

• Dash Grenadine (½ ounce) 

The less said about this version — or, for that matter, any cocktail that calls for sour mix — the better. Attempt at your own risk. 

The Secret Is Honey — and Salt

These days, Pink Lady recipes look like an amalgam — a cocktail, you might say — of many of the notions present in the last hundred years’ worth of recipes. They vary from recipe to recipe, but they have converged on a similar idea of what the drink should be. 

Typically, today’s recipes call for two ounces of liquor, which is sometimes divided equally between gin and apple brandy and sometimes tilted toward gin, plus lemon juice or (less often) lime, plus a portion of grenadine that is typically (though not always) a little less than the citrus portion, all rounded out and fluffed up by egg white. The cream is gone. The apple brandy is back. The sour mix, praise Embury, is nowhere to be found. 

Evidently, some people like these recipes. If you are one of them, make what you like. But I find them harsh and underpowered. The problem, at heart, is that the grenadine just doesn’t do enough work. 

Which is why, as I hinted earlier, a second, additional sweetener is necessary. 

As I noted earlier, David Wondrich’s Oxford Companion entry says that the drink has never become part of the contemporary canon. And while I would never, ever disagree with Wondrich on matters of drink, I would note that the Pink Lady appears not once but twice in the first Death & Co. book, Modern Classic Cocktails, including on a full-page entry devoted to one of the bar’s regulars, bartender Tom Chadwick, who recounts his first time being served a Pink Lady…by one of the great bartenders of the last two decades, Phil Ward. It was never a cool-kid cocktail-nerd handshake drink like the Aviation or the Bamboo, but at least some notable bartenders of the cocktail renaissance were clearly fans. 

Somewhat intriguing, the recipe is slightly different in the two entries. But in both cases, the difference between the Death and Co. version and others is clear: They’ve added a sweetener — another syrup in addition to the grenadine — and expanded the total volume of syrup so that it exceeds the volume of the citrus. In one version, honey syrup is added; in another simple syrup. But in both versions the drink is rendered as an 8:4:3 cocktail (total strong:total sweet:sour). 

To my taste, this is a much better drink. But this version is almost too sweet even for me, so I’ve cut it back to an 8:3:3, with two ounces of spirit plus three-quarters of an ounce each of sweeteners and citrus. 

I’ve also made one final addition: saline solution, or salt. 

As regular readers know, I am a huge proponent of salt in cocktails, and while you can simply add a tiny pinch to your shaker, the best way to incorporate salt into a drink is to use a homemade saline solution — made by gently heating and integrating 4 parts water and 1 part salt — and a cheap dropper bottle to dispense. But if you’re using salt at all, you’re ahead of the cocktail curve. 

A few other notes on preparation:

• Because this cocktail involves an egg white, you will need to shake it twice — first with all the ingredients and no ice, in order to fully mix all the ingredients with the egg; second with all the ingredients and ice, in order to chill and dilute the drink before straining. 

• For the gin, you can use most any gin — I am always fond of Beefeater, and Tanqueray works very well too. But if you have a bottle of Plymouth on hand, you should reach for that. It’s lighter and brighter, and plays nicer with the apple brandy. 

• For the apple brandy, the key thing is to avoid using cheap apple-flavored brandy. Ideally, you should try to find a bottle of Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy, and then, when you’re done, use it to make a Jack Rose. But the lower-proof Laird’s Applejack will work fine here, as will French calvados. 

• You really do need to make your own grenadine. Rose’s and other similar widely available store-bought brands are unpleasantly sweet, and they don’t really taste like grenadine is supposed to taste. It’s pomegranate syrup! You make it with sugar and, well, pomegranate juice. (Recipe below.)

• Yes, this drink calls for an egg white — in this economy. I understand that egg prices are a subject of consternation recently. If you are trying to save on eggs, consider using just a half an egg white: First, separate the white into a small glass, then use a spoon to hold some of it back before dropping about half the egg white into the shaker. Egg whites add texture but not much flavor, so slightly reducing the volume won’t throw the drink off balance. 

The result is a salted honey interpretation of the Pink Lady that, I like to think, honors the drink’s origins while updating it for contemporary palates. It’s sweeter than many early versions, but not too sweet, strong but not too strong, pleasantly tart and bright thanks to the lemon juice and salt, with an eggy, frothy body that gives the whole concoction a cloud-like softness. It’s a drink that you can love, and a drink that can say, I love you. 

Pink Lady (Salted Honey Edition)

• 3-4 drops 20% saline solution (or a pinch of alt)

• ¼ ounce homemade grenadine 

• ½ ounce 3:1 honey syrup 

• ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice 

• 1 ounce Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy

• 1 ounce gin, such as Plymouth 

• 1 egg white 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Separate an egg, leaving the egg white in a small bowl or cup. 

2. Combine all other ingredients in a cocktail shaker. 

3. Once all the other ingredients are combined in the shaker, add the egg white. 

4. Dry shake — shaking all ingredients in the shaker WITHOUT ICE for about 10 seconds. 

5. Open the shaker and add ice, then shake a second time to chill and dilute, about 10-12 seconds. 

6. Strain contents of shaker into a coupe glass. 

7. Garnish with a brandied cherry. 

20% Saline Solution

• 1 ounce salt

• 4 ounces water

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine salt and water in a small saucepan.

2. Heat on medium low, stirring to integrate, until there’s no salt sludge on the bottom of the pan. Do not let boil.

3. After it’s fully integrated, bottle in an eye-dropper bottle. Stores on a shelf/in a cabinet. Will last at least six months.

3:1 Honey Syrup

• 3 ounces water

• 9 ounces honey

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine honey and water in a mixing bowl.

2. Whisk until thoroughly integrated.

3. Bottle and store in the fridge. Should keep for at least a month.

Homemade Grenadine

• 250 grams sugar

• 250 grams POM Wonderful pomegranate juice

• 15 grams orange blossom water (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Pour pomegranate juice into saucepan. 

2. Heat on a stovetop at medium. Warm the juice, but do not at any point let it boil. 

3. After juice is warm (2-3 minutes), gently pour in sugar and orange blossom water.

4. Whisk intermittently until sugar and liquid are thoroughly integrated — roughly 5-10 minutes. By the end, you should not see floating sugar granules. When you scrape the bottom of the pan with a spoon, there should not be a layer of sugar sludge. The entire mixture should be the same syrupy consistency. 

5. Pour integrated syrup into squeeze bottle or plastic storage container, then chill. Store in the refrigerator for up to three weeks. 

   Very Large Valentine’s Dogs