Millionaire

Bourbon, Cointreau, grenadine, and egg white in a Jazz Age aspirationally named cocktail — silk-smooth texture and layered fruit sweetness in the 1920s tradition.

The Millionaire cocktail belongs to the Jazz Age tradition of aspirationally named drinks whose names reflected the era's celebration of wealth, glamour, and excess. Cocktails named for financial achievement — the Millionaire, the Billionaire, the Gold Rush — appeared in American and expatriate bar culture through the 1920s and 1930s, when Prohibition had simultaneously suppressed domestic drinking and elevated cocktail culture into a forbidden luxury associated with sophistication and transgression. The Millionaire's specific formula — bourbon or rye whiskey with Cointreau, grenadine, and egg white — appears in several 1920s and 1930s bartending guides in various configurations, and like many drinks of the era it exists in multiple versions that share a name without sharing a recipe. Cointreau, produced in Saint-Barthélemy-d'Anjou in the Maine-et-Loire department of France by the Cointreau family since 1875, is a triple-distilled orange liqueur made from both sweet and bitter orange peels. Grenadine, a pomegranate-based syrup used in cocktails since the late 19th century, provides color and tartness. The egg white enrichment connects the Millionaire to the broader Victorian and Edwardian tradition of egg-shaken cocktails — the Silver Fizz, the Boston Sour — that were fashionable before Prohibition disrupted American cocktail culture.