White Lady

The White Lady is a classic gin sour of the sidecar and daisy family, built from London dry gin, an orange liqueur of the triple sec type, and fresh lemon juice, shaken hard and strained ice-cold into a stemmed cocktail glass. It is a pale, dry, citrus-forward drink — bright with lemon, lifted by sweet orange and carried by a clean juniper backbone — and one of the enduring cocktails of the early-twentieth-century London and Paris bar scene. Often a little egg white is added, giving a soft, silky foam and a faint cloudiness; the original recorded recipes carry no egg. It is the gin counterpart of the brandy-based Sidecar, sharing its spirit-citrus- liqueur balance.