Cocktail · Medium strength
Gin Fizz
Gin, lemon, sugar, shaken hard and topped with soda: the Tom Collins's sharper, shorter cousin.
How to order it: Shake it hard, serve it short with no ice, drink it fast. Add an egg white and it becomes a Silver Fizz.
Flavor profile
The recipe
- 2 oz gin
- 1 oz lemon juice
- ¾ oz simple syrup
- Shake hard with ice; strain into a small highball, no ice
- Top with 1 oz soda water; optional egg white for a Silver Fizz
The story
The fizz is one of the oldest families in the drinks book: spirit, citrus, and sugar, shaken hard, lengthened with a splash of soda, and drunk quickly, before the bubbles give up. Jerry Thomas put fizzes into print in the nineteenth century, though sources disagree on whether his 1862 guide or the 1876 edition first named the gin version. New Orleans adopted it as a hometown specialty, and from around 1900 into the 1940s its bars reportedly kept teams of bartenders shaking in shifts. Its most famous descendant, the Ramos Gin Fizz, added cream, egg white, and orange flower water. Shorter and sharper than a Tom Collins, it endures as the purest statement of gin, lemon, and bubbles.
Modern variations
The Gin Fizz cast a long shadow. These pours carry the torch:
Adjacent pours