The Pegu Club Cocktail is a bracing combination of gin, bitters, lime juice, and orange curaçao. It was the house cocktail of the British officer’s club of the same name in what is now Yangon, Myanmar. Precisely when the drink was created and by whom is unknown; the earliest known reference to it is from 1927, in Harry McElhone’s Barflies and Cocktails. See McElhone, Henry “Harry”. There are, however, references to “red” and “yellow” cocktails being served at another club in Yangon in 1888 (the Pegu Club is a light yellow-orange) and to iced drinks served at the Pegu Club bar the next year, as well as to “ante-tiffin gin cocktails” drunk in Myanmar from 1899, so an early origin for the Pegu Club Cocktail is quite possible.
The drink reached its widest exposure when Harry Craddock reprinted McElhone’s recipe for it in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, writing that it “has traveled, and is asked for, around the world.” See Craddock, Harry Lawson. In one respect, however, that recipe has not been generally followed: it specified that the lime juice in it be the preserved and sweetened Rose’s, rather than fresh, and limited the amount to 1 teaspoon, implying that this was less than the one-sixth measure of orange curaçao called for (the British habit of giving measures in parts, rather than absolute quantities, and then throwing in some of the latter just for fun, is an eternal source of confusion for the cocktail historian).
However, most modern mixologists follow, wittingly or not, the recipe published earlier that same year by “Jimmy,” who had worked at Ciro’s in London (just as McElhone had before him); this called for equal parts curaçao and lime juice, presumably fresh, since it did not specify the preserved kind. It is unknown whether Jimmy had an independent source for the recipe or simply modified McElhone’s. In any case, his version is a bright, clean, and vibrant drink that would go on to be one of the foundational formulae of the twenty-first century cocktail renaissance.
Recipe (as served at the Pegu Club, New York): 60 ml Tanqueray London dry gin, 22 ml lime juice, 22 ml Marie Brizard orange curaçao, 1 dash Angostura bitters, and 1 dash orange bitters (equal parts Regan’s and Fee’s). Shake, and strain into a cocktail glass.
See also curaçao; gin; and Pegu Club.
Browne, Edmond Charles. The Coming of the Great Queen. London: Harrison & Sons, 1888.
Cocktails by “Jimmy.” New York: David McKay, 1930.
By: Audrey Saunders and David Wondrich