Frisco Sour

Serve in a

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.

Hazardous ingredients

Pasteurised egg white (or aquafaba) 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 209 calories.

Alcohol content:

• 1.5 standard drinks
• 19.17% alc./vol. (38.34° proof)
• 21.3 grams of pure alcohol