Pink Lady

Depends which book you trust. English recipes through the 1930s tend to leave it out and give you gin, grenadine and egg white alone, which is simpler and blander. Fifteen milliliters of apple brandy puts an orchard note and a bit of wood underneath the sweetness. Keep it in.

Because the color lives in the liquid and the head is mostly air. Egg protein traps bubbles that scatter light back at you as white, whatever sits underneath. If you want a rosy top, drop two or three dots of grenadine onto the set foam and drag a toothpick through them.

It's matched by 15 of lemon, so the arithmetic holds. What absorbs the sugar is the apple brandy sitting under the gin. Fifteen milliliters of applejack carries tannin and a dry wood edge the grenadine has to push through, which is why the gin-only version tastes noticeably sweeter at identical measures.

Look at the numbers. Forty-five milliliters of gin plus 15 of apple brandy is a measure and a half of spirit, against 30 ml of lemon and grenadine combined. That's a stiff sour wearing a pink hat. The reputation came from the color and stuck, and the drink never deserved it.

A classic Pink Lady calls for 45 ml (1.5 oz) Gin, 15 ml (0.5 oz) Apple brandy, 15 ml (0.5 oz) Fresh lemon juice, 15 ml (0.5 oz) Grenadine, 1 egg white Egg white. That single-serve spec scales cleanly — the recipe above converts it to oz and multiplies it for 2–4 drinks.

A standard Pink Lady is roughly 27% ABV once mixed (before ice melt softens it further). That makes it spirit-forward — closer to a Martini than to a beer, so sip it slowly.

A Pink Lady is shaken — the rule of thumb is to shake anything with citrus juice. About 13 seconds with plenty of ice chills and dilutes it correctly.