The Clover Club
For the man who arrived before the room was readyFor the man who arrived before the room was ready
The Clover Club predates Prohibition and takes its name from a Philadelphia literary and legal society that met at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel from the 1880s onward. The cocktail was their house drink: gin, lemon, raspberry, egg white. It disappeared with Prohibition and the men who made it, and was revived a century later. It is pink, which has caused lesser men to hesitate. Those men are not in this room.
Ingredients
- 2 oz
London Dry gin
One with a pronounced floral note, leading with orris root, finishing with a clean, almost powdery juniper.
- ½ oz
Fresh lemon juice
- ½ oz
Dry vermouth
A small addition that changes the drink's backbone from decorative to structural.
- ½ oz
Raspberry syrup
Made from fresh raspberries. Simmer with equal weight of caster sugar, strain without pressing, cool completely.
- 1
Egg white
From a cold egg, cracked immediately before use.
Three fresh raspberries pressed gently through a fine sieve onto the foam, producing a pattern that — if done correctly — resembles nothing in particular and everything simultaneously.
Method
Dry shake first — no ice — vigorously, for a full thirty seconds, until the egg white has begun to foam.
Add ice and shake again, hard, until the outside of the shaker frosts.
Double strain into a chilled coupe.
The foam will rise and settle into a surface of quiet, architectural precision.
"Pink is the color of confidence," The Idiot announced, upon ordering this at a gathering attended by three sitting industrialists and a man whose title has never been confirmed. No one disagreed. This is, in itself, remarkable.