I love cocktails with eggs in them, specifically egg whites! Oh, don't cringe, egg whites give a cocktail a wonderful mouth feel by adding a lovely silken texture as well as body and they add no flavor at all! You get a nifty little kick of protein too. Additionally, egg whites create these marvelous foams (if properly shaken) on top of the cocktail that make for a really beautiful presentation.
If you happen to be vegan don't despair, there is a perfectly vegan substitute for using eggs in cocktails called aquafaba. Believe it or not, aquafaba is the liquid that garbanzo beans, or chickpeas as some people call them, are cooked or canned in. You'll see I used aquafaba in my New York Sour recipe below.
Since June 3rd is National Egg Day I thought it would be fun to chat about how to make egg cocktails and also round up links to my favorite egg drinks in one post.
Nogs, Flips, Sours, Fizzes
These are the four types of alcoholic beverages that employ eggs. Nogs always employ a milk product along with whole eggs while Flips may or may not include some milk or cream with the egg. Sours don't have to use eggs at all but when they do it's only egg whites. Fizzes can use whites, yolks and whole eggs and are categorized as Silver Fizzes (whites), Golden Fizzes (yolks), or Royal Fizzes (whole eggs) and include some type of soda.
Tips for Whipping Up Egg Cocktails
To get the marvelous foam and to emulsify the egg white into the cocktail you will want to apply a dry shake technique (shake without ice) to your ingredients, then shake again with ice to chill. Think of how a meringue is created then apply that concept to a cocktail shaker instead of your KitchenAid or hand mixer. You really have to give that egg white a lot of agitation in order to break down the protein and add air for fluffiness, a couple of minutes at least*. Frankly, I don't have the stamina so I cheat and use a stand or immersion blender for my dry shake step then transfer my drink to an ice filled shaker to chill. I get some seriously great mounds of foam with this technique.
Egg foams, when properly executed, are quite sturdy (my Tangelo Bourbon Tango actually trapped a bee!) and those foams can support cool garnishes like flowers, herb leaves, spices and even stencilled designs.
You can create a flavored foam separately from the cocktail. I created a Cognac foam for my above mentioned Tangelo Bourbon Tango and for my Meringue Island Punch I actually baked the foam (aka meringue cookies)! You can even make a full on merinque, spoon it on a cocktail and torch it like I sometimes do for my Lemon Meringue Pie Martini.
Occasionally an egg foam can carry a very slight raw egg smell and a useful little trick when making your egg cocktail is to add an aromatic mist, a dusting of spice, a twist of citrus or a few drops of bitters on top of the foam to mask possibility of a raw egg smell disturbing the enjoyment of the cocktail.
Another little tip? Fresh, cold eggs are much easier to hand separate. Buying pasteurized egg whites, yolks or whole eggs requires no separation on your part but you will have to measure.
Fresh versus Pasteurized, Part or Whole?
You'll notice my recipes mostly call for pasteurized eggs. This is a precaution on my part because, though the chance of salmonella poisoning from eggs is fairly rare these days, it never hurts to be cautious. A fresh egg, properly cleaned and stored, does give a slightly better foam than pasteurized eggs but not by much as far as I can tell, so either option will give you a lovely cocktail.
You'll also notice most of my recipes below use only egg whites. This is a personal preference as I'm not that fond of the overly rich, heavy nature of yolks in my cocktails except in some type of Nog during the holidays. Plus yolks DO add a bit of their flavor which needs some refined taste balancing and libations with yolks are way more fattening.
YOU HAVE TO
BREAK A FEW EGGS ...
My Favorite Egg Cocktails:
ABSINTHE MINDED LEPRECHAUN FIZZ
ANGOSTURA AND OLD LACE
APPLE GO BRAGH SOUR
Spiced Lavender BEES KNEES
BELMONT JEWEL BREEZE
BLACKBERRY BOURBON FIZZ
BLOOD ORANGE BLACKBERRY WHISKEY SOUR
BOURBON CHERRY PIE SMASH
BOYSENBERRY RUM FLIP
BUNNY TRAP
CANDIED ORANGE ROSEMARY RYE COCKTAIL
CARROT CAKE COCKTAIL
CHERRY CLAFOUTIS MARTINI
CHERRY DIAMOND FIZZ
CHERRY RUM BALL FLIP
CHOCOLATE BOURBON EGGNOG
The CLOVER CLUB
The COCKTAIL PURPLE
DERBY ROYALE COCKTAIL
DRACULA'S BLOOD & SAND
DRUNK BUNNY CARROT DILL COCKTAIL
DRUNK SKELETONS in the CLOSET
EGG NOG MARTINI
ENCHANTED FAERIE COCKTAIL
The GOBBLED KNOB
GOLDEN RAMOS FIZZ
GRILLED PEACH RUM MIMOSA
KING CAKE FLIP
LADY ROSE COCKTAIL
LEMON MERINGUE PIE MARTINI
MACCHIATO EGGNOG
MERINGUE ISLAND PUNCH
NEW YORK SOUR
PINEAPPLE PISCO SOURPINK LADY
PUMPKIN EGGNOG MARTINI
PURGATORY PUNCH
RAINS OF CASTAMERE SOUR RAMOS GIN FIZZ
SPICED RUM POMEGRANATE FIZZ
TIPSY MISS
TANGELO BOURBON TANGO
WAKE UP CALL
WHITE CHOCOLATE EGGNOG MARTINI
WHITE LADY
WICKED WITCH'S BREW
Just in case those aren't enough, here's a few more cocktails that employ eggs from my database archive:
Boc Car
The Easter Egg Martini
Have an eggstra lovely National Egg Day and Cheers, M'Dears!
* Probably the most famous egg cocktail, the Ramos Gin Fizz, has a great historical back story about requiring a 12 to 15 minute shake to be properly prepared, at least according to its creator, Henry C. Ramos. It's said that during the hey day of this cocktail, lines of shaker boys were employed solely to shake Ramos fizzes for the clamoring masses! Just think what a Vitamix would have meant to bars back in those days.
Updated 10-2021
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