Crisp and citrus-bright with a creamy lift, this is a long, frothy refresher, its gin, lemon and sugar shaken hard until the egg white whips into a fine, pillowy foam that rides on the soda. Where a Gin Fizz is all sparkle and snap, this keeps the same clean, sharp edge but lets the foam soften every sip, so it drinks like sunshine with a soft collar.
Garnish: Lemon Wheel
Shaken · Highball · Up
add
Add gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and the egg white to a shaker.
shake
Dry shake hard without ice for about 10 seconds to emulsify the egg white into a foam.
shake
Add ice and shake again until well chilled.
strain
Strain into a chilled highball or tall tumbler (no ice).
top
Top with a splash of soda water to lift the foam.
garnish
Garnish with a lemon wheel.
No one is credited with inventing the Silver Fizz; it grew out of the fizz family that swept American bars in the 19th century, a class of drinks often linked with New Orleans. Its earliest known printed recipe appears in Jerry Thomas's 1876 Bar-Tender's Guide — Old Tom gin, sugar, lemon or lime, the white of one egg and a fill of Seltzer — though Thomas was recording a drink already in circulation rather than devising one. The "silver" name marks the egg white, setting it apart from the yolk-based Golden Fizz and the whole-egg Royal Fizz. Today it is usually built on the IBA's Gin Fizz proportions with an egg white shaken in.