Pink Lady Cocktail , with gin, grenadine, and, originally, lime juice and applejack, was one of the most popular drinks of the first half of the twentieth century, despite being tarred with a reputation as a so-called ladies’ drink—a label attached not so much to drinks that women liked to drink, which were basically the same as the ones men drank, but to drinks that some men believed would make them seem effeminate. Like the Pink Lady, many of those drinks were stronger than the “manly” ones to which they were being compared and no sweeter.
The Pink Lady Cocktail was named after the musical comedy of that name, which opened at New York’s New Amsterdam theater in 1911, starring Hazel Dawn (1890–1988), who told a correspondent of drinks historian William Grimes that the drink had been created for a surprise party in her honor at Murray’s Roman Gardens on 42nd Street.
Unfortunately, the Pink Lady that was served that evening is probably not the one that ultimately entered the books: the 1911 Pink Lady was a jigger of ojen (a Spanish anisette) shaken up with Peychaud’s and Angostura bitters. (In New Orleans, this became known as the “Pink Shimmy.”) In 1913, however, Jacques Straub, who drew many of his recipes from the bar book of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, published the gin-applejack Pink Lady (basically, a Jack Rose with a splash of gin). See Jack Rose. Although often simplified (the citrus juice was often omitted and the applejack generally replaced by more gin) and augmented with egg white or cream or both, it is this version that entered the canon. By the end of Prohibition, the version encountered in all but the best bars was generally a mix of gin, grenadine, and egg white. It was crude but effective, at least as an intoxicant.
Despite its pedigree, the gin-applejack Pink Lady never quite made it into the cocktail renaissance’s list of approved drinks. That is regrettable.
Recipe: Shake well with ice 30 ml gin, 30 ml bonded applejack, 15 ml lime juice, 10 ml grenadine, and 10 ml egg white. Strain into chilled cocktail glass.
See also Waldorf-Astoria.
Erhard, Ursinus. “Interesting News from Gotham.” San Francisco Chronicle, May 28, 1911, 39.
Grimes, William. Personal correspondence, February 22, 2009.
Straub, Jacques. Straub’s Manual of Mixed Drinks. Chicago: R. Francis Welsh, 1913.
By: David Wondrich