Name: Breakfast Martini
Total time: 3 min
Cuisine: Cocktail
Ingredients: 1 barspoon Orange marmalade; 50 ml Gin; 15 ml Triple sec; 15 ml Lemon juice

Breakfast Martini
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Serve in a Martini glass

Ingredients:
1 barspoon	Orange marmalade
1 ²⁄₃ oz	Hayman's London Dry Gin
¹⁄₂ oz	Cointreau triple sec liqueur
¹⁄₂ oz	Lemon juice (freshly squeezed)

Read about cocktail measures and measuring

How to make:

Select and pre-chill a Martini glass.
Prepare garnish of orange zest twist and slice of toast.
STIR marmalade with gin in base of shaker until it dissolves.
Add other ingredients, SHAKE with ice.
FINE STRAIN into chilled glass.
EXPRESS orange zest twist over the cocktail and discard.
Garnish with a slice of toast on the rim.

Strength & taste guide:

No alcohol

Medium

Boozy

Sweet

Medium

Dry/sour

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Cocktail of the day:

27th July 2025 is Sleepy Head Day

Review:

The success or failure of this tangy drink is partly reliant on the quality of marmalade used. For ease of use, choose "fine cut" or even "no peel"/"shredless" orange marmalade.

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Variant:

Marmalade Cocktail - orange marmalade, dry gin and lemon juice.
English Marmalade (Hawksmoor Marmalade Martini) - with orange marmalade, dry gin, red bitter liqueur, lemon juice and orange bitters.
Milanese Breakfast Martini - with orange marmalade, dry gin, red bitter liqueur, lemon juice and prosecco.
Paddington Bear Martini - with orange marmalade, dry gin, pisco and bianco vermouth.
Breakfast Gimlet - with orange marmalade, dry gin, lime cordial and lemon juice.
20 best Marmalade, preserves & conserves cocktails

History:

This neo-Martini was created in 1996 by bartender and long-term President of the United Kingdom Bartender's Guild, Salvatore Calabrese.

Being of proud Italian descent, Salvatore usually has little more than a swift espresso for breakfast. However, one morning, Sue, his English wife, insisted he sit down for breakfast and served him toast and marmalade. Salvatore came up with the idea for his Breakfast Martini while enjoying the tangy preserve-covered toast and took the jar to work with him. Later that day, at London's Library Bar in the Lanesborough Hotel, he perfected his signature cocktail.

Coincidentally, Harry Craddock's 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book includes a recipe for a "Marmalade Cocktail" that's very similar to Salvatore's Breakfast Martini. However, Salvatore says that the inspiration for his drink was the hearty English breakfast and not the classic English bartending book.

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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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Showing 10 of 32 comments for Breakfast Martini.
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John CARR

6th June at 16:04

With a generous spoon of homemade marmalade and fresh lemon juice you can’t go wrong. Classic and inspired recipe. Give it a hearty shake and your guests will love this 💛

Mia Strong

22nd February at 23:17

This is a lovely drink! On the sweet side but with a savory breakfast it works so well.

Max Langer

8th January at 18:18

Made this with home-made fairly runny orange marmalade. Transformative, updating to Outstanding. The choice of marmalade is, fairly unsurprisingly, the key to this cocktail.

Mike Gibb

7th January at 15:10

Barspoons are an imprecise measure. British marmalade has a lot of pectin (solid, will heap up). Continental marmalade, jams are much more liquid.

Tip 1: for consistency, use kitchen scales. An individual serve pot, think hotel breakfast buffet, is 30g which works well for us.

Tip 2: it's much easier to muddle marmalade with just a little liquid. Get it dissolved before adding the rest.

We usually make one Breakfast Martini and one English Marmalade and then share. It's what Sundays are for.

Avery Garnett

19th March 2024 at 20:10

Coming to this directly after a White Lady and having recently revisited the outstanding English Marmalade (as linked in the variants)...it sadly disappoints a little. A very good gin sour, but unfortunately the marmalade disappoints a little as a marmalade drink (it's overwhelmed by the orange of the cointreau) and it doesn't do enough to be better than a white lady with the silky texture..so a great drink on its own, but surrounded by even greater expectations.

Simon Difford

20th March 2024 at 08:13

I'm inclined to agree. Hence, I've knocked our rating back to 4.5

Morten Carlsbaek

7th March 2024 at 11:44

Really enjoyed this marmelade cocktail. I used a topped bar spoon, thin cut orange marmelade and did NOT double strain - just like Salvatore Calabrese recommended in the video. Maybe a small modification of Difford's recipe would be in place, Simon?

All in all, it worked beautifully with some marmelade settled in the bottom of the martini glass giving structure and extra taste. Extra bonus, no fine straining trouble.

Simon Difford

7th March 2024 at 13:54

I always prefer my straight-up cocktails fine-strained, as much to remove the ice chips as anything else.

1 reply

Peter McCarthy

3rd March 2024 at 20:38

This is nice! Nice breakfast/brunch cocktail option if you want something that's not heavy on the fruit juice. Gin is balanced out by the other ingredients without being too sweet, imo. Nice counterpoint to doughier breakfast foods like pancakes.

Sean Anderson

15th January 2024 at 13:49

For me the marmalade simply refused to dissolve in the gin. So I put orange juice in a pot with some brown sugar and reduced it until fairly thick, but not too thick to mix into the drink. Worked very well, but I’ve never had a decent version of the marmalade version to compare!

Nick Marks

30th December 2023 at 12:10

First cocktail out of edition 17 book. Had them many times before in restaurants, first time made at home. Garnish on the side and the marmalade used was Fortnum & Mason No 62 Orange and Champagne marmalade and on a Peters yard sourdough original cracker as the garnish was superb. Lovely little brunch martini.