A bright, deceptively simple sour built on London dry gin, shaken hard with fresh lemon and a touch of sugar, then lifted by a couple of dashes of Angostura where egg white or soda would usually sit. The bitters give it backbone and a faint spiced perfume over ice without muddying the clean citrus snap, and a twist of lemon peel sharpens the aroma.
Garnish: Lemon Peel
Shaken · Rocks · On the Rocks
add
Combine gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and Angostura bitters in a shaker.
shake
Add ice and shake hard until well chilled.
strain
Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice (or fine-strain up into a coupe).
garnish
Garnish with a lemon twist.
The drink is most often credited to Dale DeGroff, chief bartender at New York's Rainbow Room from 1987 to 1999, and is placed in the 1990s. As the story goes, it was poured first under the plain working name "Gin Thing" until a patron renamed it for F. Scott Fitzgerald, the novelist of the Jazz Age. DeGroff's years behind that bar are well documented, but the tie between him and this particular recipe rests on widely repeated accounts rather than a firm written record. It has since settled in as a modern classic.