sour mix is a packaged mixture of sweet (sugar) and sour (lemon and/or lime juice, or an artificial equivalent), designed to provide a more convenient and consistent way of incorporating those ingredients than squeezing fresh juice and sweetening it to order. See sour. There are many brands of prepackaged sour mix (aka sweet-and-sour mix, margarita mix, daiquiri mix, etc.) commercially available, most of which tend to be laden with chemicals and preservatives. A fresh version of sour mix can be made by mixing equal parts of simple syrup and lemon and/or lime juice. (For a “margarita mix,” some orange juice may be added as well.) Some bars list “homemade” or “house sour mix” on their menus as an ingredient to indicate they aren’t using a commercial mix. See simple syrup.
Rose’s Lime Juice (known as Rose’s Lime Cordial in the United Kingdom) could be considered the first sour mix. Patented in 1867, it was not specifically designed as a cocktail ingredient but was soon thereafter advertised for use in mixed drinks and would become the defining ingredient in the Gimlet. See Gimlet. By the beginning of the twentieth century, many American bars, at least, were using a prepackaged mix. In the days before the Pure Food and Drug Act, this was often highly suspect. As the American journalist Julius Chambers noted in 1904, “At all cheap bars there is a fluid bought by the gallon and compounded of acetic acid and syrup” with “white of egg” (which in small quantities would foam slightly when shaken, as real lemon juice does). By 1911, even many respectable hotel bars had graduated from fresh juice to Lemos, a somewhat better grade of sour mix sold by the C. M. Brooke company of Melbourne, Australia, and Brooklyn, New York.
The use of commercial sour mix in place of fresh juices would get a boost during Prohibition, for both commercial bars and home use. Holland House marketed a variety of cocktail mixes, along with sour mix, to the general public in the 1940s. They were seen as a quick and easy way to make cocktails without “mess or guess.” It wouldn’t be until the late 1980s when the use of fresh-squeezed juices would gradually start to return. Dale DeGroff is famous for promoting fresh juices when he worked at the Rainbow Room in New York’s Rockefeller Center and in his many consulting jobs. One of the ways he converted bars and hotels to fresh juice was by demonstrating that, contrary to what its makers claimed, sour mix was actually more expensive than fresh juice—not unit for unit, where sour mix enjoyed a slight edge, but in total, since a greater volume of the mix was required per drink. See
The intent of using a sour mix is to simplify the process of making a mixed drink by replacing the need of adding two ingredients (simple syrup, then fresh lemon juice or lime juice) with that of simply adding a single ingredient (sour mix). Using premade sour mix presents challenges, as well: the type of citrus required or the ratio of sweet to sour can vary widely among different drinks and recipes, and fresh-made sour mix has a shorter lifespan.
Chambers, Julius. “Walks and Talks with Men and Women of the Hour.” Chicago Tribune, June 22, 1904, 6.
DeGroff, Dale. The Craft of the Cocktail. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2002.
“A Public Benefactor.” New York Hotel Record, October 14, 1913, 8.
Regan, Gary. The Joy of Mixology. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2003.
“Rose’s” (advertisement). In London and Suburban Licensed Victuallers’ … Directory, ed. Henry Downes Miles, iii. London: Miles, 1874.
By: Robert Hess