Gin Fizz

Gin, lemon, sugar, and soda water — codified by Jerry Thomas in 1862 and made legendary by Henry Ramos's cream-and-egg-white New Orleans elaboration.

The Gin Fizz is one of the oldest and most specifically documented cocktail categories in American bar history — a preparation whose foundational structure of gin, lemon juice, sugar, and soda water was codified in late 19th-century American bartending guides and whose most elaborate expression became the subject of a genuine New Orleans legend. Henry C. Ramos opened the Imperial Cabinet Saloon on Gravier Street in New Orleans in 1888 and developed the Ramos Gin Fizz, an elaboration of the standard formula that added egg white, heavy cream, and orange flower water, requiring extended shaking — reportedly twelve minutes or more — to achieve the required frothy, ethereal texture. During Mardi Gras at the peak of the Ramos Gin Fizz's popularity, the bar employed teams of shakers who passed the drink down a relay line to build the required foam. The standard Gin Fizz without these additions had been a staple of American bars for years before Ramos's creation: Jerry Thomas documented the Fizz category in his 1862 Bar-Tenders Guide. The Gin Fizz's structure — spirit, fresh lemon, sugar, and carbonated water built in a glass without ice — produces a drink whose soda water carbonation carries the gin's aromatics directly to the nose with each sip, making the quality of the gin unusually transparent.