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Widow Jones' Gin Fizz

A gin fizz made with gin, lemon, egg white, sugar, cream, ice, and seltzer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Widow Jones' Gin Fizz

Ingredients

Directions

Shake

  1. Fill a shaker halfway with finely cracked ice.

  2. Add the egg white, lemon juice, sugar, and gin.

  3. Shake for five minutes.

  4. Add the cream that has been chilled until nearly frozen.

  5. Shake again for another five minutes.

Serve

  1. Strain into a long glass and fill with ice-cold seltzer.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + gintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Forms a foamy, silky texture when shaken with the spirit and juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and gin.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the lemon's sourness.
Gin
Provides the main spirit flavor and alcohol base.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the drink.

The step that matters

Shaking the cream in with the other ingredients. Shaking for the full time with very cold cream helps the egg white and cream emulsify and aerate into a thick, stable foam. Under-shaking leaves the drink flat and separated, while the cold keeps the foam from melting too quickly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, gin, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, gin, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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