Cocktail recipe
Clover Club
Silky pink foam crowns a bright gin sour, where raspberry adds perfume and colour rather than heavy sweetness.
Ingredients
- 60 ml (2 oz) gin
- 15 ml (½ oz) fresh lemon juice
- 15 ml (½ oz) raspberry syrup
- 15 ml (½ oz) pasteurized egg white
- Garnish: 3 fresh raspberries
Preparation
Dry-shake gin, lemon, raspberry syrup and pasteurized egg white without ice to build foam. Add ice and shake again until thoroughly chilled. Fine-strain into a chilled coupe and arrange three raspberries on top.
Glassware
Chilled coupe
History
The Clover Club cocktail takes its name from a Philadelphia society of journalists and civic figures founded in 1882 and associated with the Bellevue Hotel. Cocktail historian David Wondrich identifies a June 1901 newspaper recipe attributed to Michael Killackey of New York's Waldorf-Astoria as the earliest known printed example: gin, lemon, raspberry syrup and egg white. Later early-20th-century printed recipes varied, sometimes incorporating dry vermouth. The drink's reputation declined after Prohibition; Julie Reiner's Brooklyn bar Clover Club helped revive it in the late 2000s. No specific member or bartender can be securely credited with its original invention.
Mixology View
A pink cocktail once associated with an influential men's club defies modern expectations. Our bright raspberry-and-lemon build follows the early core, while the lack of vermouth is a chosen house style, not a universal historical specification.