Clover Club

Gin, lemon, raspberry syrup, and egg white in a pre-Prohibition Philadelphia classic — its pink egg-white foam revived by Brooklyn's Clover Club bar in 2008.

The Clover Club is a pre-Prohibition Philadelphia cocktail that predates most of the drinks that now share its category shelf. The drink takes its name from the Clover Club, a real Philadelphia organization of journalists, lawyers, and literary figures who gathered regularly at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel on South Broad Street for dinners beginning in the 1880s. The Bellevue-Stratford, which opened in 1904 and became one of Philadelphia's premier hotels, hosted the club's meetings in its dining rooms where the cocktail named for the organization was served as the gathering's signature drink. The formula — gin, fresh lemon juice, raspberry syrup, and egg white shaken to a frothy, foam-topped presentation — is a sophisticated gin sour in the Victorian tradition of egg-enriched cocktails. The raspberry's fruit acid and sweetness balance the lemon's more assertive citrus, and the egg white's foam creates a texture distinctly more elegant than any garnish alone could produce. The Clover Club fell into obscurity after Prohibition disrupted the continuity of American cocktail culture and the Bellevue-Stratford's social role declined, but it was dramatically revived in the early 21st century when Brooklyn bartender Julie Reiner opened Clover Club bar on Smith Street in Brooklyn in 2008, placing the cocktail at the center of a bar named and designed around it. The drink has since appeared on craft cocktail menus worldwide, its egg-white froth and vibrant pink color making it as visually distinctive as it is historically significant.