Skip to main content
Drink

Gin Sour

A cocktail made with gin, lemon juice, sugar, and ice, served chilled with an orange garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Gin Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and shake

  1. In a shaker, combine sugar, gin, lemon juice, and cracked ice.

  2. Shake well until chilled.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain into a glass.

  2. Garnish with a slice of orange and serve.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Gin + orangetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together158 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and lemon 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

Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Dry gin
Forms the spirit base and carries the drink's main flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the sour its bright, tart character.
Cracked ice
Chills the drink and dilutes it slightly as it shakes.

The step that matters

Shake well until chilled. Shaking vigorously with ice chills the drink quickly and adds a measured amount of water. Too short a shake leaves it warm, harsh and unbalanced, with the sugar and acid not fully blended.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gin, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes