Peach Blow Fizz

A decadent Prohibition-era fizz combining gin with strawberry, lemon, and cream, topped with soda for a frothy, fruit-forward effervescent delight.

The Peach Blow Fizz appears in Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book carrying one of the more quietly deceptive names in the classic canon: despite its title, the drink contains no peach whatsoever. The name refers instead to a variety of strawberry. In 19th-century American horticultural and culinary usage, peach-blow or peach blow described a deep pink or crimson color associated with peach blossoms — the term appeared in pottery (peach-blow glazed ceramics commanded high prices in the 1880s and 1890s) and was applied to certain strawberry cultivars with a particularly vivid red-to-pink coloring. The fizz itself uses strawberries as its fruit component, combining them with gin, fresh lemon juice, sugar, and cream, extended with soda water and shaken to create the frothy, billowing texture that defines the cream fizz category. Fizzes were among the most elaborate drinks in the pre-Prohibition American bartender's repertoire, requiring precise technique — particularly the prolonged shaking needed to fully incorporate the cream — and they fell largely out of fashion after Prohibition disrupted the professional bartending tradition. Craddock's decision to include the Peach Blow Fizz in the Savoy Cocktail Book was partly an act of preservation: by 1930 he was documenting an American bar tradition that Prohibition had made inaccessible in its home country, and the fizz category represented some of its most accomplished technique.