Clover Membership Cocktail Recipe

The Clover Membership is a straightforward cocktail made with gin, recent lemon juice, raspberry syrup, and an egg white. The tangy cocktail is served in a coupe glass and garnished with recent raspberries.

This pre-Prohibition drink is actually a Gin Bitter that swaps easy syrup for a raspberry-based sweetener. The syrup provides the drink a pink-orange hue and provides fruity sweetness.

The Clover Membership was invented within the late 1800s and was named after the Philadelphia social membership the place the drink first took place. The venue, positioned at Philadelphia’s Bellevue-Stratford resort was described as “a membership for social enjoyments and cultivation of literary tastes, and the encouragement of hospitable intercourse” in an 1897 handbook for the membership written by Mary R. Deacon, daughter of the Charles R. Deacon who served because the membership’s secretary from 1882 to 1896.

The drink turned a mainstay on the membership’s bar and the recipe discovered its method to many early Twentieth-century cocktail books together with William “Cocktail” Boothby’s 1934 World Drinks and The right way to Combine Them. In it, Boothby requires grenadine in lieu of raspberry syrup and an addition of grated nutmeg as garnish. He additionally gives a couple of variations (Clover Membership No. 2–4, the Clover Leaf, and Clover Royal) a few of which embrace a garnish of mint, others with cream, and some calling for French dry vermouth.

After Prohibition, the drink fell out of vogue till the early 2000s when, through the craft cocktail resurgence, bartenders seemed to late nineteenth and early Twentieth century cocktail books for inspiration. Amongst these bartenders was Julie Reiner, now an icon within the hospitality world, who was so impressed by nineteenth century basic cocktails that she opened The Clover Membership in New York Metropolis in 2008. Like a few of Boothby’s variations, Reiner’s model of the Clover Membership cocktail replaces among the gin with dry vermouth to melt the drink and produce out added depth and complexity.

What makes the Clover Membership work?

The Clover Membership employs a basic bitter ratio of equal elements candy and bitter, mixed with twice as a lot of a base spirit. The gin’s herbaceous taste profile creates a counterpoint to the citrus and vivid fruit notes of lemon juice and raspberry syrup, bringing wanted aromatics.

Although you will discover premade raspberry liqueurs and sweetenders, when made recent, raspberry syrup incorporates each candy and tart notes that create steadiness inside itself. Nonetheless, in a pinch, bottled variations will work, as will swapping the ingredient with grenadine.

Like different cocktails within the bitter class, this drink requires an egg white and employs a dry shake (the place the substances are first shaken with out ice) to emulsify and aerate the egg white inside the different substances. This method creates a silky, clean, and nearly fluffy drink with a satisfying texture.