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Recipes

The Pink 1930s Cocktail That’ll Make You Feel Super Classy

This article is written by a student writer from the Spoon University at Brandeis chapter.

Imagine – it’s 19-twenty somethin’ and you’re in New York on 5th Avenue at a speakeasy. There are flappers everywhere dragging cigs and flipping what they can of their bobbed hair—doing anything deemed unacceptable cause stfu manners. People around you are talking about bee’s knees and cat’s pajamas and you know bees don’t have knees and cat’s don’t wear pajamas, but WHATEVER. You just need a drink, or panther piss or whatever they called it then.

The bar tender puts a glass down in front of you and it’s filled with liquid the color of blush. What is this secret cocktail with such mystique, you wonder?

Drinker of the twenty-first-century, allow me to introduce you to the Chuck Norris of cocktails that has been undervalued since the Prohibition Era and that is imaginatively sitting in front of you right now: the Pink Lady.

I’m sure you can guess why this drink has been left behind with the damsels who told Victorian society to f*** off and keep the change.

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Gif courtesy of giphy.com

Yeah, the cocktail is pink.

Pink Lady was extremely popular until the late 1930s when people started labeling the cocktail a typical “girly” drink. Many men who loved Pink Lady, or its doppelgänger, Clover Club, resigned from drinking it because they believed that the color made them look like sissies. But the real sissies are the cats… or rather the pussies who refuse to give this badass mixi a sip.

Easy

Prep Time: 3 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Total Time: 3 minutes

Servings: 1 glass

Ingredients:
1.5-oz. dry gin
.5-oz. applejack (apple brandy)
½ lemon
2 teaspoons grenadine
1 egg white
6 cubes ice

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Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

Directions:
1. Squeeze half lemon into shaker.

cocktail

Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

2. Add dry gin.

cocktail

Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

3. Add applejack.

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Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

4. Add grenadine.

cocktail

Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

5. Add egg white (either use a regular egg for the whites or buy a carton of egg whites)

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Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

6. Shake the mixture dry.

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Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

7. Add ice and shake again.

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Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

8. Pour it into a glass and enjoy your pink ladyness.

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Photo by Anthony Nomakeo

Love learning about new cocktails? You need to see these articles:

Niki Laskaris

Brandeis '16