Frisco Sour

Difford's Guide
Discerning Drinkers (84 ratings)

Garnish:

Lemon zest twist (discarded) & lemon slice wheel & maraschino cherry sail

How to make:

SHAKE all ingredients with ice and strain back into shaker. DRY SHAKE (without ice) and fine strain into ice-filled glass.

1 2/3 fl oz Bourbon whiskey
1/2 fl oz Bénédictine D.O.M. liqueur
1/2 fl oz Lemon juice (freshly squeezed)
1/4 fl oz Lime juice (freshly squeezed)
1/4 fl oz Sugar syrup 'rich' (2 sugar to 1 water, 65.0°Brix)
2 dash Angostura Aromatic Bitters
1 dash Orange Bitters by Angostura
1/2 fl oz Pasteurised egg white or Aquafaba (chickpea water) or 3 dashes Fee Brothers Fee Foam cocktail foamer
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Hazardous ingredients

Pasteurised egg white is potentially hazardous to those with allergy or intolerance.

Review:

A bourbon-laced sour with monastic herbal notes.

Variant:

Without egg white &/or served straight-up.

History:

The Frisco Sour started life as a mere Frisco, sans Sour (egg white) in Lucius-Beebe's 1946 The Stock Club Bar Book.
"Frisco Cocktail:
2 oz bourbon
¾ oz Benedictine
twist of lemon peel
Stir and serve in 3oz. cocktail glass.
"

The original Frisco is a tad sweet and is much improved with a dash or two of orange bitters to bolster the lemon oils from the twist. This obviously led a bartender somewhere to add citrus juice. In Stanley M. Jones 1977 Jones' Complete BarGuide he lists the above Frisco but with 2oz bourbon and ½oz Benedictine followed by a sour version:
"Frisco Sour
Sour glass Shake
½ oz lemon juice
¼ oz lime juice
¾ oz Benedictine
1-¼ oz whiskey
¼ tsp sugar
Lemon wedge, lime wheel
"

Once this cocktail morphed into a sour then the addition of egg white was a natural progression, which I believe came in the 1990s when this was a popular cocktail in the London bar scene. That's when I first encountered the Frisco Sour which was by then served on-the-rocks. However, it also works well, as per Jones' recipe, strained into a stemmed sour glass or coupe.

Nutrition:

One serving of Frisco Sour contains 210 calories.

Alcohol content:

  • 1.5 standard drinks
  • 19.17% alc./vol. (38.34° proof)
  • 21.3 grams of pure alcohol
Difford's Guide remains free-to-use thanks to the support of the brands in green above. Values stated for alcohol and calorie content, and number of drinks an ingredient makes should be considered approximate.

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Buy direct from
the_whisky_exchange store logo
£ -.--

Makes a minimum of ... cocktails
Just £ -.-- per cocktail*

* This list may not include all required ingredients.
Price per cocktail is an estimate based on the cost of making one cocktail with the available ingredients shown above and does not include any postage charges.
Buy direct from Difford’s Guide
Difford's Easy Jigger
£8.72 £8.72 exc VAT
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