To sip a Ramos Fizz on a hot day is to step into a sepia-toned world peopled with slim, brown-eyed beauties who smell of magnolias and freshly laundered linen, and tall, mustachioed gentlemen who never seem to work and will kill you if you ask them why. The Wondrich Take, Esquire Magazine
2 Ounces Gin
4 Ounces Heavy Cream (you could try it with non-fat half and half to reduce calories)
2 Egg Whites
1 Ounce Lemon Juice
1 Ounce Lime Juice
4 Teaspoons Sugar, super fine or powdered
6 Drops Orange Flower Water
Cracked Ice
Seltzer Water
Freshly Ground Nutmeg
- Combine in a chilled cocktail shaker with plenty of cracked ice, then shake viciously for at least one minute -- preferably two -- and strain into a chilled Collins glass. Top up with cold seltzer or club soda. (You could probably use an immersion blender if you wanted to.)
- Sprinkle with fresh nutmeg.
If the Sidecar is jazz, the Ramos Fizz is ragtime. Sure, it's from New Orleans -- cradle of jazz and all that -- but it harks back to 1888, two years before Jelly Roll Morton was born and thirteen years before the great Louis Armstrong joined us. Like ragtime, Henry C. Ramos's creation is a matter of poise, of balance, of delicacy. This isn't a drink to throw together from whatever you've got lying around; every part of the formula is crucial. The egg white gives it body, the cream lends smoothness, and the citrus provides its cool. The sugar tames the citrus, the gin does what gin does, and the seltzer wakes the whole thing up. As for the orange flower water -- that's for mystery.
