I will attempt to make this post as coherent as possible. It’s early, service was long and full of shaken drinks, and I’m dealing with an insane toddler who wants nothing more than to steal this time from me. There’s always a big playlist on the docket for Sundays and this one is no different, so bear with me as I try to focus and get down to the quick here.

My main focus today will be trying to pinpoint the bottom of this whole whiskey sour thing. What do I mean by this? Well, at some point some shithead added an egg white to whiskey, either lime or lemon juice, and sugar, and thus created a strange craze that has bled into nearly every busy bar service I’ve ever worked. Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re currently playing the world’s smallest violin for me right this moment but I ask you this: Would you like your drink four minutes after you order it or ten minutes after you order it? That’s what I thought. Yeah, on a crazy Saturday night some guests ordered not one but two whiskey sours (with an egg white) and clogged the whole damn machine with their selfish thirst.

Before we go further, I’ll put up a whiskey sour for you:

2 oz. Bonded Bourbon

.75 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz. Rich Honey Syrup

One Egg White from One Egg

I prefer the reverse dry shake here and cheat a bit by using a BFR alongside three or four smaller rocks. So, I shake with this first and do my dry shake after ward, double strain into a large coupe, and then add some Peychaud’s Bitters to finish the top with a fancy design. I used to do a nice decoration but nowadays employ “The Vayu Method” of lashing bitters over the top in a faux Jackson Pollack manner.

The original sours had no egg white. Sailors mixed bad whiskey, rum, or gin with lime or lemon juice and sugar while at sea. The sugar to make the cheap booze more palatable and the citrus to combat scurvy. They had no idea they were creating the magic formula that would last forever. In this day and age we’d call it a daiquiri. Booze, citrus, sugar. But today when someone orders a sour they most likely intend to quaff an egg white along with the other ingredients. Other “sours” have their own names like gimlet or Tommy’s Margarita.

Today the term means something different and there’s no better way to get in the weeds than someone ordering a “whiskey sour” at the exact moment all the people are sat and the tickets start to ring through. In my younger days we actually had egg white cocktails on the menu proper. Ah yes, I remember the days of Mr. Lee getting absolutely destroyed by Clover Club after Clover Club. For the non bartenders out there, the egg white drink demands a hell of a lot of dry shaking, which means whipping the egg white around inside the tin without ice to get it all nice and frothy. It burns the shoulders out if you give a shit and do it right. It’s probably easier not to care and just make a crappy one. Yes, as the night goes on they get less and less frothy. It takes longer which is why it clogs up the service bar. Think about this the next time you order one.

In the early days, egg drinks were called flips, but these recipes called for the whole damn egg, ale, and heat. Weird right? Let’s examine the original flip recipe in the first cocktail book ever, Jerry Thomas’ bartender’s guide from 1862 also known as How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant’s Companion.

148. Egg Flip

Put a quart of ale in a tinned saucepan on the fire to boil; in the mean time [sic], beat up the yolks of four, with the whites of two eggs, adding four table spoonfuls of brown sugar and a little nutmeg; pour on the ale by degrees, beating up, so as to prevent the mixture from curdling; then pour back and forward repeatedly from vessel to vessel, raising the hand to as great a height as possible–which process produces the smoothness and frothing essential to the good quality of the flip. This is excellent for a cold, and, from its fleecy appearance, is sometimes designated “a yard of flannel.”

Uh…

Right underneath this recipe, Thomas gives us of another method.

Beat up, in a jug, four new-laid eggs, omitting two of the whites; add half a dozen large lumps of sugar, and rub these well in the eggs, pour in boiling water, about half a pint at a time, and when the jug is nearly full, throw in two tumblers of Cognac brandy, and one of old Jamaica Rum.

Uh…So strange…

So it seems the original (at least the first printed) flips required heating the eggs before adding the prescribed booze. There was also a theatrical quality to this method which I’m sure was cool to see.

The book doesn’t mention whiskey sours at all. The first sour in the book is a brandy sour, coming right after a brandy fix in the order:

140. Brandy Fix (Use small bar glass)

1 table-spoonful of sugar

1/2 a wine glass of water

1/2 of a lemon

1 do. brandy (?)

Fill a tumbler two-thirds full of shaved ice. Stir with a spoon, and dress the top with fruit in season.*

142. Brandy Sour

The brandy sour is made with the same ingredients as the brandy fix, omitting all fruits except a small piece of lemon, the juice of which must be pressed inside the glass.

*The Santa Cruz fix is made by substituting Santa Cruz rum instead of brandy.

Ok, so the first sour. Not shaken, but stirred. I’m sure that all came later. But the biggest thing here is yes, no egg white. Turning to the 1871 cocktail volume, The Gentlemen’s Table Guide we see the egg flip recipe is much the same and uses a few different ingredients but still involves inclusion of whole eggs and heat, but the recipe for a sour becomes a tad more modern.

Brandy Sour (sometimes called brandy fix)

Use a tumbler. Tablespoonful of powdered sugar or candy, half wineglass of water, quarter of a lemon, 1 glass of brandy; fill the tumbler two-thirds full of ice; shake well. Any other spirits cane be used, or oranges in the place of lemon.

Ok, basically the same as Thomas’ book from four years previous with the exception that we are now shaking our sours. No mention, however, of a sour including egg white.

Anyway, I’ll have to finish this dive up tomorrow, as I have errands. Stay tuned.