Aviation
45 ml Gin, 15 ml Maraschino liqueur, 15 ml Lemon juice, 7.5 ml Crème de violette, 1 Maraschino cherry
Pegu Club
Gin, orange curaçao and lime, with bitters keeping it honest.
Classic
Medium
4 min
Photo: Pegu Club cocktail by Paxsimius · CC BY-SA 4.0 · All credits
Ingredients
Measures below are multiplied for 12 drinks. Unmeasurable amounts such as “a splash” are left as written.
- 720 ml Measuring jug A measuring jug: pour to the 720 ml line. Gin - A juniper-forward London dry is what it was written for
- 240 ml Measuring jug A measuring jug: pour to the 240 ml line. Orange curaçao
- 240 ml Measuring jug A measuring jug: pour to the 240 ml line. Lime juice
- 12 dashes Bottle Twelve quick shakes of the bottle - each a few drops, about a millilitre. Angostura bitters
- 12 dashes Bottle Twelve quick shakes of the bottle - each a few drops, about a millilitre. Orange bitters - Both bitters, if you have them - that is what makes it a Pegu Club
- 12 wedges Lime wedge (optional)
Measured in Millilitres (UK). Sign in to read these in American measures. Print a kitchen card at this size.
What the jigger, the spoons and the jug hold, in millilitres and in fluid ounces, is on the measures reference.
Quick version
- Shake gin, curaçao, lime and two bitters hard with ice, strain into a coupe.
Method
Batch (12 drinks)Batch (12 drinks) - about 1.2 l of measured ingredients, before ice and dilution.
Timings and per-glass steps below are written for one drink and are not scaled. A full jug takes longer to chill, so stir or shake until it is properly cold rather than by the clock, and pour over fresh ice one glass at a time.
- Chill a coupe glass.
- Fill a shaker with ice and add the gin, orange curaçao, lime juice and both bitters.
- Shake hard for twelve seconds, until the tin is too cold to hold comfortably.
- Strain into the chilled glass and garnish with a wedge of lime.
Serve it
Volumes in this story are multiplied for the size above, along with the ingredients. Years, ratios and the capacities of glasses and jugs are left as written.
Pegu Club
Named after the colonial club in Rangoon where British officers drank it in the 1920s, and recorded in the Savoy Cocktail Book as one of the greats. It spent most of the twentieth century as a bartender's favourite that nobody else had heard of, which is a very good sign in a cocktail: the people making drinks for a living kept making this one.
Getting it right
This is a gin sour with a very specific seasoning, and the seasoning is the bitters - both kinds. Angostura gives it clove and cinnamon, orange bitters give it the peel, and together they make a drink that tastes far more complex than its four parts. Use a juniper-forward London dry gin, fresh lime and a real orange curaçao rather than triple sec, which is sweeter and flatter here. Shake it hard; like all sours it wants air and cold, and it should be served in a glass straight from the freezer.
Tasting notes
Juniper and bitter orange first, sharp lime underneath, then spice and a long, dry, aromatic finish. Elegant, confident, and the sort of drink that makes a bar feel like a serious place.
If you enjoy the shape of it, a White Lady and a Southside are the same idea written for different moods.
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