White Lady
Gin, orange liqueur and lemon, shaken hard and strained up.
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A pale, milky-white White Lady served up in a cocktail glass on a bar counter
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring. Dilution is modelled rather than measured, as a fraction of the poured volume before any ice; dotted figures descend from that estimate.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
25 ml fresh lemon juice
50 ml London dry gin
25 ml orange liqueurProprietary
- 25 ml fresh lemon juice
- 50 ml London dry gin
- 25 ml orange liqueurProprietary
- ~50 ml water
Glass
Vessel
150 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 180 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
4 steps · 1m 37sSqueeze the 25 ml fresh lemon juice and strain out the pips and pulp.
Combine the 50 ml London dry gin, the 25 ml orange liqueur and the 25 ml fresh lemon juice in a shaker and fill it with cubed ice.
Shake hard for 12s. Short and violent; the aim is to chill and aerate, not to melt the ice.
No syrup and no rim: the orange liqueur alone carries the drink's sweetness against the lemon, so the balance depends on measuring it as carefully as the gin rather than treating it as a splash.
Double strain into a chilled coupe, catching the ice shards the shake has broken off.
Common pitfallA cheaper, drier triple sec in place of the reference orange liqueur leaves the drink short of sugar against the lemon's acid, and it reads sharp rather than balanced even though the recipe has not changed.
Keeping and make-ahead
Batched ahead, this keeps sealed and cold. The water line the engine adds is the dilution figure from the spec panel, not a rule of thumb.
About
Harry MacElhone's 1919 crème de menthe sour, reworked with gin a decade later and settled into its modern ratio by Harry Craddock at the Savoy.
Harry MacElhone created the first White Lady in 1919 at Ciro's Club in London 1, and it bears little resemblance to the drink served under the name today: equal parts white crème de menthe, triple sec and lemon juice, a mint-forward build rather than a gin one 2.
MacElhone revisited the recipe after moving to his own bar, Harry's New York Bar in Paris, publishing a reworked version in 1929 that dropped the crème de menthe for gin and moved from triple sec to Cointreau specifically 1. The change turned a sweet, minty drink into a dry citrus sour built on a spirit rather than a liqueur.
Harry Craddock, running the American Bar at London's Savoy Hotel, published his own version in The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, increasing the proportion of gin against the liqueur and lemon 2. That ratio, rather than MacElhone's original mint recipe or his first gin revision, is the one that took hold as the standard White Lady.
A later Savoy head bartender, Peter Dorelli, added egg white to his own serve for a fuller texture, a variant still poured at some bars alongside the version without it 2.
- 1The Original White Lady Cocktail Recipegiffard.com
- 2Around the World in 50 Classic Cocktails: The White Ladysipsmith.com