Lemon flip - cocktail of Kings

Ever since I worked at Gaucho Restaurant in Manchester I’ve had a bit of a thing for cocktails. When you have to make and taste them everyday you kind of end up falling in love with them. So now living in London I often find myself endulging in a cocktail or two!

I was at Shoreditch House with my house mate when I first came upon a lemon flip. Having never heard of the ‘flip’ family of drinks we endulged…unbelieveable! A flip cocktail refers to the use of a whole egg which makes the cocktail rich, creamy and frothy. In the olden days a flip was a crude mixture of rum, sugar, beer and spices that was then heated with a red hot poker which caused it to froth, or flip which gave it it’s name.

Nowadays you don’t see many red hot pokers behind bars and after trying to create a similar drink by mixing all the ingredients and then quickly poor into a very hot pan you wouldn’t want such a drink anyway. I’m not sure whether I simply got the amounts wrong but the warm, yeasty and rather alcoholic drink I made was vile.

I wasn’t sure what I should use as the base ingredient so I went to consult one of my favourite cocktail places Public House in Angel (@Public_HouseN1). After much discussion we thought it might be interesting to sack off using a spirit at all and instead to use a sweet white wine such as a Sauternes which is what I ended up doing and here is what I came up with. You could use another wine but I found this worked perfectly.

This is a lovely cocktail – rich, smooth and refreshing without being too light. Ideal for a cold evening by a fire!

LEMON FLIP

Ingredients –

3 measures Sauternes

½ lemon juiced

Zest of 1 lemon

2 barspoons sugar syrup

1 whole egg

Method –

-       Add all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker

-       Dry shake (no ice) for a good 15 seconds*

-       Fill the shaker up with ice and shake

-       Strain into a small tumbler and garnish with lemon peel

* It’s important to dry shake so that the egg white fully incorporates with the rest of the ingredients and it gives the cocktail it’s frothy texture.