Prince's Smile

A bright and balanced cocktail pairing apple brandy with gin, apricot brandy, and lemon for royal refreshment.

The Prince's Smile is a Jazz Age cocktail whose royal-themed name placed it among the affectionately royalist drink names that circulated in British bar culture of the 1920s, when the Prince of Wales — the future King Edward VIII, born 1894 — was a visible, fashionable, and internationally traveled figure whose public appearances generated significant press coverage in both Britain and abroad. Harry Craddock published the recipe in The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), the most authoritative cocktail manual of the inter-war period, produced during Craddock's tenure as head bartender at the American Bar in the Savoy Hotel. The formula combines cognac with Calvados in a split-base approach that draws on two of France's finest brandy traditions — the grape distillate of the Charente and the apple distillate of Normandy — alongside apricot brandy and lemon juice. The combination of the two French brandies produces a base of considerable depth and variety: cognac's stone-fruit and oak warmth provides one flavor register while Calvados's orchard-apple character provides another, and the apricot brandy's benzaldehyde-derived almond note bridges the two while adding sweetness. Lemon juice provides the acid structure that brings the multi-brandy base into the sour format's balance. The drink reflects the Savoy Bar's ambition during Craddock's era, when sophisticated ingredient combinations demonstrated professional skill.