Pisco Sour is a drink commonly composed of pisco, lemon or lime juice, sugar or simple syrup, egg white, and bitters. It was first served in the Morris’ Bar in Lima, Peru, which Victor Morris operated from 1916 to 1929. The first known recipe, and the only one published while Morris’ Bar was in operation, appeared in a Lima cookbook in 1924, within an entry for “Whisky Sour,” which, translated into English, read: “Whisky Sour. The proportion is for a small glass of whisky, one of water, the juice of a lemon, one spoon of sugar and pieces of ice; put all in a cocktail shaker; shake a lot and serve. The Pisco Sour is prepared the same way.” A similar recipe was published in 1930 in Santiago, Chile; neither early recipe includes egg whites or bitters, both common ingredients today. This suggests Morris’s original concoction did not have those ingredients, and even in many regions of Chile today, the drink is mixed closer to the basic 1930 formula.
One theory about the change in formula is that Morris’s recipe was modified to its present form at the Maury Hotel in Lima by Mario Bruiget, a young pupil of Morris’s who later went to work there for fifty years; if so, it must have been before 1928, when an American traveler in Lima encountered the drink made with egg whites. Another theory is that Morris developed his Pisco Sour after reading a Peruvian cookbook published in 1903 that had a “cocktail” recipe calling for shaking an egg white with a cup of pisco, a small spoonful of fine sugar, and drops of lemon juice (no ice or bitters). Also in 1903, Scientific American published an encyclopedia of formulas including one for a Silver Sour that is almost identical to the modern Pisco Sour, including ice, but made with gin instead of pisco.
Until the 1960s, the Pisco Sour remained largely a local specialty, albeit one much appreciated by foreign travelers (Charles H. Baker Jr. called it “by far the best drink invention south of the ‘Zone’ ” in 1951). See Baker, Charles Henry, Jr. Only then did it begin to appear with regularity outside of Peru and Chile. In 1960, New York restaurateur Joe Baum included it (as the “Pisco Sawer”) on the opening menu for La Fonda del Sol, his extravagant tribute to the cuisines of South America. A few years later, Braniff Airways offered to its passengers on South America–bound flights. It is not until the cocktail renaissance of the early 2000s, though, that the Pisco Sour took its rightful place as one of the indispensable cocktails. See cocktail renaissance.
The Pisco Sour is one of the few cocktails in the world that has the distinction of having a government-approved day in its tribute. Pisco Sour Day is celebrated in Peru on the first Saturday of February; festivities include a national Pisco Sour mixing contest.
Recipe: Shake with ice: 60 ml pisco, 22 ml lime juice, 22 ml simple syrup, white of 1 egg. Strain into large, chilled coupe and dash the top with Angostura or Peruvian bitters. Note that in Peru this is mixed with lemon juice, but the lemons there fall somewhere between lemons and limes in flavor. Some like to mix the two juices.
See also Morris, Victor Vaughan; and pisco.
“E. M. A.” El cocinero mundial. Lima: Imp. Penitenciaría, 1924.
Gonzales, Gustavo. El Cocktailero internacional. Santiago: Edición Única, 1930.
Titus, E. K. “Hark, tenants!” Brooklyn Eagle, April 10, 1928, 5.
Toro-Lira, Guillermo. History of Pisco in San Francisco: A Scrapbook of First Hand Accounts. Lima: Createspace, 2010.
Toro-Lira, Guillermo. Wings of Cherubs: Saga of the Rediscovery of Pisco Punch, North Charleston, SC: BookSurge, 2007.
By: Guillermo L. Toro-Lira