Clover Club

Consider the Egg. A product that holds a variety of fascinating uses, including as being an ingredient in many excellent cocktails. The Pisco Sour, and Ramos Gin Fizz are perhaps the most well known, but the time was when one of the most popular cocktails of the day was one that included the use of an egg, and yet today few have ever heard of it.

The Clover Club Cocktail was created prior to prohibition, and its name comes from the Philadelphia men’s club by that name and was created at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. Hard to say exactly why these particular ingredients were chosen for this drink, but I expect you will find their combination to be a tad surprising. When faced with gin drinks, most people assume that this juniper heavy spirit will assail their taste-buds, with the Clover Club Cocktail however, this is not the case. You could easily serve this to a gin-averse friend, and they would never be the wiser.

Even the lemon juice and raspberry syrup (or grenadine) play very soft and subtle roles in this drink, with the egg white providing a creamy texture and a attractive carpet of foam settling on along the surface.

Yeah, I know, many people shy away from raw eggs. Perhaps originally just from being squeamish, and later due to concerns regarding salmonella. I can’t provide an argument against those who are just plain squeamish, but as for the salmonella issue there are several points that can be raised in the defense of the raw egg. First and foremost is that the egg industry overall has come a long way since the initial scares of several decades ago.

The estimated danger of encountering salmonella in a fresh egg is extremely low, to the point of being almost non-existent.

You then have the fact that this drink contains both alcohol and citric acid, which are mortal enemies of salmonella. And if that isn’t enough, there is also the availability of pasteurized egg whites which work just as well in this drink, as they do in any other drink which might make use of raw egg whites.

Clover Club Cocktail

• 1 1/2 oz gin
• 3/4 oz lemon juice (or lime juice)
• 1/4 oz raspberry syrup (or grenadine)
• white of 1 egg, or 1 tablespoon pasteurized egg white

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake hard for about a minute to form a good froth. Strain into a cocktail glass.

As listed above, this drink will be very smooth and gentle in flavor. Some may want to increase both the lemon juice and the syrup to bring in more in line with the heartier flavors that many expect in their drinks these days, but I recommend giving the recipe a try as-is first.