A crisp, lemon-bright gin sour that drinks like a Sidecar with gin where the brandy was, the triple sec's orange sweetness rounding off the sharp edge of fresh lemon. Shaken hard and served up very cold, it pours pale and clean, and a little egg white, if you add it, turns it silky beneath a soft cap of foam.
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Add gin, triple sec, fresh lemon juice (and egg white if using) to a cocktail shaker.
shake
If using egg white, dry-shake without ice first to build foam, then add ice and shake again; otherwise shake well with ice until chilled.
strain
Double-strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, served straight up with no ice.
Two bartenders named Harry lay claim to it, and the record has never settled between them. One account credits Harry MacElhone, said to have first mixed it in 1919 at Ciro's Club in London using crème de menthe, then to have rebuilt it around gin in 1929 at his Paris establishment, Harry's New York Bar. The rival story belongs to the American Bar at the Savoy, which names Harry Craddock as its author; his 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book set down the gin, Cointreau and lemon build. Egg white crept in later as an optional extra, and the IBA now counts the drink among its Unforgettables.