All you need to know about this 1850s sour cocktail.
As a category of cocktail, the Sour is a venerable one, and its whiskey-based incarnation is the most prevailing.
Countless citrus-and-spirit classics have followed, but the Whiskey Sour stands relatively unchanged, aside from a few details.
The egg white that's near-essential nowadays wasn't always so, for example, but the core elements of whiskey, sugar and lemon juice come to us directly from the mid-1800s.
The earliest written references to the Whiskey Sour date back to around 1870, following the first mentions of the Sour in the 1850s.
Like all the best classics, there's an interplay between the ingredients that transforms the entirety of the drink into so much more, and also lends itself well to variation.
VIDEO DEMO by Anders Ericksen: How to make the best Whiskey Sour.
RECIPE from Schofield's Fine & Classic Cocktails
- 50ml bourbon
- 25ml fresh lemon juice
- 15ml sugar syrup
- 15ml egg white
Method: Dry shake ingredients, then wet shake, strain into a chilled coupette and garnish with Angostura bitters.