Name: White Lion (David Embury's recipe)
Total time: 4 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 60 ml Light white rum; 7.5 ml Triple sec; 7.5 ml Grenadine syrup; 15 ml Lime juice; 1 fresh; 5 ml Sugar syrup 'rich' (2:1)

Ingredients

2 fl oz

Light white rum (charcoal-filtered 1-4 years old)

1/4 fl oz

Cointreau L'Unique triple sec liqueur

1/4 fl oz

Monin Grenadine Syrup

1/2 fl oz

Lime juice (freshly squeezed)

1 fresh

Lime shell (squeezed/spent lime husk)

1/6 fl oz

Sugar syrup 'rich' (2 sugar to 1 water) 65.0°Brix (optional)

Health & Nutrition

Alcohol content:

We don't have enough information to calculate the alc./vol., but based on known ingredients, this recipe contains at least:

21.3 grams of pure alcohol

History

Adapted from a recipe purloined from David Embury's seminal 1948 book, The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Embury had a dry palate so we've added a spoon of sugar syrup to his recipe, which, depending on your palate, you may want to reduce or omit this.

Embury does the While Lion an injustice by saying, "This, of course, is simply a White Lady without the egg white and with lime juice in place of lemon". That might sum up his version but the original White Lion in Jerry Thomas' 1862 The Bar-tenders Guide is so much more.

Review

Please don't judge this recipe until you have experienced this fruity Daiquiri made homemade "grenadine" (1 part freshly pressed pomegranate juice and 2 parts caster sugar). Then you'll end up with a delicious cocktail with an off-white hue. With commercial grenadine syrup, this cocktail can have a jammy flavour and is likely to be bright cherry red - hardly a 'White' Lion. That said, some prefer cherry red and jammy!

Comments & Discussion

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Todd carlson 3 months ago

Interesting to see the half lime shell added to the shaker. I do that all the time. Anytime I am making a lime-based drink and have a squeezed out lime peel i toss it in the shaker.

James Brooke 2 years ago

Many people say “Embury had a dry palate” but I’m not convinced that is correct.
Cocktail recipes usually state simple syrup (1:1 sugar and water) or strong simple syrup (2:1 sugar and water) but on page 101 of my copy of David Embury’s “Fine Art of Mixing Drinks” he says “I have found that a mixture of 3 cups of sugar to each cup of water yields a very satisfactory syrup.” So he’s really using 3 measures of simple syrup when he calls for 1 part of sugar syrup in his recipes. That’s not dry!

Simon Difford 2 years ago

Embury does call for a 3:1 syrup, but that is not three times as sweet as a 1:1 syrup. For example, if a recipe states 10ml (1/3oz) of 2:1 rich sugar syrup, then the equivalent in 1:1 simple syrup is just 15ml (½oz), not 20ml, as you might expect. I have experimented with Embury’s 3:1 syrup, and it is too thick to pour out of a measure without leaving an unknown percentage in the jigger. It also tends to crystallise.

James Brooke 1 year ago

Thanks, Simon. I've been thinking long and hard about this. My understanding is that 2:1 is 33% sweeter than 1:1 and 3:1 is 50% sweeter than 1:1, so you need a third less 2:1 than 1:1, hence 15ml of 1:1 is the same amount of sweetness as 10ml of 2:1.
If I understand this correctly, it means that when Embury calls for 1 part of his 3:1 simple syrup, ignoring the increased dilution, one needs to use 15ml of 1:1 simple syrup or 10ml of 2:1 or 7.5ml of 3:1. Is that correct?
If so, then Embury's classic 8 parts, 2 parts, 1 part (using his 3:1) would be 8, 2, 2 using 1:1, or 8, 2, 1.33 using 2:1.