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 fits 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 fashionable and heavily photographed public figure. Harry Craddock published the recipe in The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), compiled during his years as head bartender at the American Bar of London's Savoy Hotel. The drink is built on London dry gin, lengthened and softened by two French orchard spirits: Calvados, the apple brandy of Normandy, and apricot brandy, whose stone-fruit sweetness and faint almond note round out the gin's botanical edge. A small measure of lemon juice supplies the acidity that pulls the combination into the sour format's balance. Gin leads the drink while the two fruit brandies share a supporting role, producing a bright, orchard-scented cocktail that is tart on the attack and gently sweet on the finish — a good example of the layered ingredient combinations Craddock's Savoy bar was known for.