White Lady

While the White Lady’s history can be disputed, it was favored by the likes of Laurel and Hardy at the Savoy Hotel in London in the 1930s. With today’s regained popularity of gin, this cocktail is poised to reclaim its deserved place in the hall of classics.

Ingredients for White Lady

1 oz Cointreau
2 oz Gin
1 oz Fresh Lemon Juice
Egg White (optional)

How to make the White Lady

Combine all ingredients in a shaker and add ice.

Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Garnish with a lemon twist.

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White Lady Cocktail

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How to make:

SHAKE all ingredients with ice and strain back into the same shaker to remove the ice. SHAKE again without ice (dry shake) and then strain into chilled glass.

Lemon zest twist

A simple but lovely classic drink with a sour finish.

Chelsea Sidecar, Boxcar

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SHAKE first four ingredients with ice and strain into ice-filled glass. TOP with soda from a siphon.

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Minty White Lady cocktail

SHAKE all ingredients with ice and strain back into shaker. DRY SHAKE (without ice) and strain into chilled glass.

White Lady cocktail

Shaken and served straight-up in a coupette glass, the White Lady cocktail is made with gin, triple sec and lemon juice. Many (including yours truly) also add egg white and sugar.

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Delilah Cocktail Recipe

3 mins
Prep: 3 mins,
Cook: 0 mins
Yield: 1 serving

The Delilah is a classic and somewhat forgotten cocktail that also goes by the names White Lady and the Chelsea Sidecar. She is a lovely and simple drink and is one of the fantastic recipes included in the Sidecar family of drinks.

Sidecar-like recipes include popular cocktails like the Margarita (tequila) and the Boston Sidecar (brandy and rum). They follow a very fundamental formula of base liquor, orange liqueur, and citrus fruit. In the case of the Delilah, you will use gin, Cointreau, and lemon. As with any sour drink, it's all about finding a balance between sweet and sour to create a taste to tickle your taste buds.

This is a fabulous cocktail, particularly with the right gin and fresh lemon juice. Experiment with some of the artisan gins that are available because there are some delightful bouquets to be found with this mix.

What You'll Need

1 1/2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce Cointreau orange liqueur
3/4 ounce lemon juice

How to Make It

Pour the ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes.
Shake well.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Choosing a Great White Lady Gin

Your White Lady can be an entirely new experience every time depending on the gin you choose. This makes the cocktail a fun one to play around with. It's also a perfect recipe to rely on while exploring new bottles of gin.

For a rather bold White Lady, opt for a traditional London dry gin like those from Beefeater, Tanqueray, or Martin Miller.

When you're in the mood for something a bit more delicate, reach for a bottle of Aviation or Hendrick's. All of these are readily available and among the brands that every gin lover should know.

For those times when you feel like discovering a uniquely crafted gin, you'll find plenty of options as well. A bottle from The Botanist has a fascinating array of Scottish botanicals and Bloom is truly a garden in a glass.

Don't forget about the American craft gins, either. St. George Spirits and Leopold Bros. are two U.S. distilleries giving the Europeans a run for their money on this style of liquor. In fact, you might check with your local distillery to see if they're creating a gin you didn't know about.

No matter which gin you choose to pour, stick with Cointreau or an orange liqueur of comparable quality and be sure your lemon juice is fresh. The White Lady is not a cocktail to be frugal with, so pour the best and enjoy.

How Strong Is the White Lady?

She looks all delicate and innocent, but the White Lady packs a punch when it comes to the alcohol content. When made with an 80-proof gin and Cointreau, you can expect her to weigh in right around 25 percent ABV (50 proof). This isn't out of sorts, either, as the majority of alcohol-dominant gin martinis are just as strong.

White Lady Recipe

My first encounter with Japanese bartending was a couple of years ago, at a seminar by Japanese-trained bartender Stanislav Vadrna. Vadrna is very passionate about the discipline, which he learned by studying under Kazuo Uyeda, famed Japanese bartender and author of Cocktail Techniques. The focus and concentration involved in the Japanese style of bartending is truly amazing.

Cocktail Techniques outlines the process of bartending that defines the Japanese style—the recipes are only part of what makes each cocktail successful. Every movement, every thought of the bartender contributes to the experience, and the cocktail itself is only a portion of the final equation. The recipes, of course, do matter quite a bit; for each classic recipe in the book, Uyeda includes the original version alongside the proportions he uses. In the introduction for the White Lady, for example, Uyeda explains that the drink is simply a Gin Sidecar, and elaborates on how the use of his hard shake technique requires that a different ratio of gin be used in his recipe.

This version of the White Lady is light and fresh, blending the subtle botanicals of gin with the sweetness of Cointreau and the tartness of lemon juice. Though the proportion of gin is high in Uyeda's iteration, his technique skillfully blends the flavors of the cocktail in such a way that it tastes as lovely and ethereal as it looks. In a pinch, you can use any triple sec, but there is no substitute for Cointreau's flavor and I highly recommend using the real thing. For the gin, use a London Dry style like Martin Miller's or Beefeater; stay away from Tanqueray, which has a more pronounced juniper profile that won't play as well here.

Yield: makes 1 cocktail
Active time: 5 minutes
Total time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

4 parts dry gin such as Martin Miller's or Beefeater (2 ounces)
1 part Cointreau (1/2 ounce)
1 part fresh lemon juice (1/2 ounce)

Directions

Add the gin, Cointreau and lemon juice to a shaker filled with ice.

Shake well and strain into a cocktail glass. Serve.

Special Equipment

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White Lady

Cocktail recipe

#12 / 303 in Gin Cocktails
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#5 / 145 in Cointreau Cocktails
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#10 / 326 in Lemon Juice Cocktails
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#9 / 192 in Sugar Syrup Cocktails
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#2 / 52 in Egg white Cocktails

5 Ingredients

2.5 cl Cointreau 2.5 cl Cointreau 2.5 cl Cointreau 25 ml Cointreau 2.5 cl Cointreau 0.83 oz Cointreau
2.5 cl Lemon Juice 2.5 cl Lemon Juice 2.5 cl Lemon Juice 25 ml Lemon Juice 2.5 cl Lemon Juice 0.83 oz Lemon Juice
5 cl Gin 5 cl Gin 5 cl Gin 50 ml Gin 5 cl Gin 1.67 oz Gin
1.5cl Sugar Syrup 1.5cl Sugar Syrup 1.5cl Sugar Syrup 15ml Sugar Syrup 1.5cl Sugar Syrup 0.6oz Sugar Syrup
1 Egg white 1 Egg white 1 Egg white 1 Egg white 1 Egg white 1 Egg white

Original
cl
ml
oz

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" > Cocktail Of The Day Classic

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" > Social Shared Difford Top 100

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100 Cocktails To Try Before You Die (list 1) by Bobby Heugel and Justin Burrows from the Anvil Bar & Refuge in Houston

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Rich has his dinner jacket on and is ready to show you how to make this fantastic gin cocktail - the White Lady. With delicate botanical notes from the gin, sharp . ">White Lady Gin Cocktail | Rich Hunt https://www.youtube.com/embed/8MAMVEk2Ors

The White Lady is a classic. It's a Prohibition-Era drink that's basically a Sidecar (https://youtu.be/5X3XZNGX0GI) with gin instead of brandy. Gin, Cointreau and . ">White Lady - a Prohibition-Era Cocktail with Gin, Cointreau, Lemon & Egg White https://www.youtube.com/embed/DPBpehisnIY

Watch this episode on Small Screen: http://smallscreennetwork.com/video/3573/the_proper_pour_with_charlotte_voisey_white_lady_cocktail/ During . ">Sponsored: White Lady Cocktail - The Proper Pour with Charlotte Voisey

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2.5 cl Cointreau Cointreau ( )
2.5 cl Lemon Juice Lemon Juice ( )
5 cl Gin Gin ( )
1.5cl Sugar Syrup Sugar Syrup ( )
1 Egg white Egg white ( )

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2.5 cl Cointreau Cointreau
2.5 cl Lemon Juice Lemon Juice
5 cl Gin Gin
1.5cl Sugar Syrup Sugar Syrup
1 Egg white Egg white

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The White Lady Recipe and History – How to make a White Lady Cocktail

The White Lady is the signature drink in our January 2016 subscriber’s kit with Sibling Gin. Your kit will be able to make 2 White Lady cocktails and 3-4 more cocktails from a choice of 2 other recipes, with even more variation online in the TASTE cocktails magazine.

There’s a certain purity to this cocktail that I really love, and I think makes it a perfect recipe to kick off a new year. Just 3 simple ingredients, make a perfectly balanced drink with a clean finish and stylish colour in the glass. The White Lady is a more modern “classic” than many, but well deserving of the status. Forget “Dry January”, and join us for “Ginuary“!

Like many classic cocktails, several different people have claimed to have created The White Lady.

It was originally believed to have been created by famous bartender Harry McElhone while he was working at London’s Ciro Club in 1919. At that time, he used equal parts of white crème de menthe, triple sec and lemon juice. It was not until he had his own Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, in 1923, that he adapted the recipe by swapping the crème de menthe with gin.

Harry Craddock, of The American Bar at The Savoy in London also gets a fair bit of credit. In 1930 he published the recipe in his Savoy Cocktail Book, increasing the volume of gin and therefore making the drink drier. It was Peter Dorelli, legendary former manager of The American Bar, who suggested adding a dash of egg white to bind the drink together and give a smooth and silky finish.

Regardless of the original creator, it’s safe to say Craddock made quite a few of these at The American Bar. According to Joe Gilmore, (another former head barman at The Savoy), the White Lady was one of Laurel and Hardy’s favourite drinks!

Egg white is optional – it adds a smooth silky texture, but many people don’t like the drying effect on the mouth or the subtle taste.

White Lady

THIS PAGE MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE.

The classic recipe for the White Lady, or Delilah, is basically a Sidecar with gin in place of brandy. But variations on it add other ingredients, which you can experiment with to find out exactly what you prefer. The overall flavor is citrus with herbal notes from the gin – light, refreshing, and neither dry nor sweet. If you like martinis, this drink makes for a great change every now and then.

Despite the genteel sounding name, this drink is stronger than you think.

This drink tastes best when it’s very cold, so shake it for a long time and serve it in a chilled glass. If a guest lingers until the glass loses its cool, bring them another chilled glass to pour the remainder into.
- 2 ounces gin
- 1 ounce Cointreau
- 1 ounce lemon juice
Half-fill a shaker with ice, then pour in the ingredients and shake until chilled. Strain into a martini glass (sugar rim is optional) and serve.

Some bartenders reduce the Cointreau and lemon juice to 1/2 ounce each, then add an egg white and/or a teaspoon of superfine sugar. Obviously, the sugar allows you to make the drink less dry if that’s your preference. The egg whites don’t affect the flavor much; they just add some wonderful body, texture and froth to the drink.

White Lady

Ingredients
- 2 ounces gin -- London dry gin
- 1/2 ounce Cointreau
- 1/2 ounce lemon juice
- 1 egg whites
Instructions:

Shake well with cracked ice, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

There's another version of the White Lady that replaces the lemon juice with white crème de menthe, multiplies the Cointreau by four, adds 1/2 ounce brandy, and omits the gin entirely. If you're going to call that a White Lady, you might as well call a Manhattan a martini. Far more meticulous in matters of nomenclature was Esquire's Lawton Mackall, whose laboratories generated the Boxcar -- merely a White Lady in a sugar-rimmed glass with the minor addition of a dash of grenadine and the substitution of lime juice for lemon.

The Wondrich Take:

1919. The most horrifying war so far in history has ended, brought to a halt not by courage or will or intelligence, but by exhaustion and the national anemia that results from losing half a million men in a single battle. Europe wants nothing more than to forget, to pick up where things left off. But it's not so easy -- everything's gotten out of whack, somehow, and there's an almost ghoulish edge to the nightlife.

Case in point, the White Lady. Invented by Harry MacElhone, bartender at the superchic Ciro's Club, London and late of His Majesty's forces (and New York's Plaza Hotel bar before that), the White Lady is an unhealthy blend of Cointreau (2/3), crème de menthe (1/6), and lemon juice (1/6). It's the color of chlorine gas and unhealthily sweet, like the smell of orchids.

Ten years later, and the force of the horror has dissipated. MacElhone has his own place, now: Harry's New York Bar, in Paris. Hemingway, everybody drinks there. And he's gotten over his shellshock (what else could have induced a competent mixologist to create a drink with two liqueurs and no liquor?). As token of this, he returns to the White Lady and makes a decisive, life-affirming change: The crème de menthe is out, gin is in, and the Cointreau is cut back to a healthy level. On the other hand, now there's an egg white, which makes the drink take on something of the look of decomposing flesh. Every wound leaves its scar.

Whether in spite of or, as we suspect, because of this last detail, the White Lady caught on. It was a particular favorite of the kind of Englishman who, back when there was an empire to make such things possible, would buy a large estate in Kenya (or India or Burma or. ) with the last of the family's boodle and leave Britain forever in order to fritter away his youth, good looks, and money in an endless binge of shooting the wildlife, seducing the neighborhood wives, griping about the servants, and inhaling cocktails at the club. The part about the servants aside, it doesn't sound half bad (depends on the wives, we suppose).

White Lady cocktail

Words by: Simon Difford

Shaken and served straight-up in a coupette glass, the White Lady cocktail is made with gin, triple sec and lemon juice. Many (including yours truly) also add egg white and sugar syrup. It is garnished with a lemon zest twist.

While the merits of adding egg white and sugar may be debated by some the gin, triple sec and lemon trio are beyond reproach - although there are subtle variations as to their proportions. However, when Harry MacElhone, from Dundee, Scotland, first created his White Lady while working at London's Ciro's Club in 1919 it consisted of equal parts triple sec, white crème de menthe and lemon juice. He created the version we know today in 1929 while at his own Harry's New York Bar in Paris, France.

The American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London claims that the White Lady was first created there by Harry Craddock and a recipe for the drink appears in his 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book. It is said that F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, was drinking at the Savoy and Craddock named the drink after her because she was a platinum blonde.

My preferred recipe follows many others in calling for:

1½ shots London dry gin

¾ shot Triple sec liqueur

¾ shot Freshly squeezed lemon juice

However, the sweetness in the Triple Sec fails to quite balance the lemon's citrus acidity (many triple sec liqueurs have become drier post 2000) so it is desirable to add a dash or even splash of sugar syrup. Whether or how much you add is a matter of personal taste but I favour 1/3 shot (10ml) of 2:1 sugar syrup.

Early recipes, including MacElhone's own Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails and Harry Craddock's 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book make no mention of the use of egg white. While the Japanese enjoy raw fish the trend for adding raw egg to sour cocktails is yet to catch on there with modern day Japanese bartenders such as Hidetsugo Ueno San vehemently against egg white being used in any cocktail.

I believe the Japanese omission of egg white is more a cultural judgement than one of taste and egg white definitely rounds a White Lady. It also makes it white. Beneath the attractive fluffy white foam produced by aerating the egg white lies a dirty yellow drink that hardly befits the name. Those against the use of egg white argue that the drink is not named after its colour but the numerous ghostly white ladies of mythology. Maybe, but dirty yellow is not as visually appealing as a fluffy white head.

It is now common for bartenders to first shake drinks using egg without ice, then to add ice and shake a second time before straining into the glass. This practice is known as 'dry shaking' and the theory is that first shaking without ice, and so at a higher temperature, better allows the drink to emulsify. However, it appears to work better if you first shake with ice and strain back into the strainer to remove the ice, then 'dry shake' the cocktail and pour into the chilled glass. I've tested 'wet' shaking against both methods of 'dry shake' and can testify that dry shaking last produces a thicker, longer lasting foam.
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Oscar Night Tipple: White Lady Cocktail

Straight Up Cocktails and Spirits

Looking to channel a little Old Hollywood glamor and elegance for the Academy Awards this Sunday - all from the no-tuxes-or-gowns-required comfort of your own cozy couch? How about shaking yourself up a batch of this simple yet luscious, 3-ingredient beauty: the White Lady cocktail.

A pale cousin of the blush-colored Pink Lady, the White Lady is a classic sours recipe with a gin base, featuring the tart tang of fresh lemon juice tempered by the orangey bittersweetness of Cointreau.

This refreshing sipper was invented by Harry MacElhone at Ciro's Club in London in 1919, and according to cocktail historian, David Wondrich, was later retooled and perfected in the late 1920s during the bartending legend's subsequent tenure at Harry's New York Bar in Paris.

Sweet, tart, and bright-tasting (think: a shorter, stronger version of gin and lemonade with a subtle orange twist), this lovely lady makes a charming date for Oscar night.

1 1/2 ounces gin

3/4 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

[Note: some White Lady recipes include an egg white for volume and texture. Add one to the mix for a little extra frothy oomph.]

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass.

Thirsty for more Oscar-worthy cocktails? Check out some of these cinematic libations from our archives:

What will you be drinking Oscar night?

Nora Maynard is a longtime home mixologist and an occasional instructor at NYC's Astor Center. She is a contributor to The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food and Drink Industries and is the recipient of the American Egg Board Fellowship in culinary writing at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow. She previously covered food and drink in film at The Kitchn in her weekly column, The Celluloid Pantry.

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