Pegu Club
A dry, citrus-fresh gin classic with a hint of bitter complexity from the British colonial era.
Ingredients
- Gin, London Dry style, ideally45 ml
- Cointreau, dry and clean-tasting15 ml
- Lime juice, freshly squeezed22.5 ml
- Aromatic bitters (Angostura)e.g. Angostura2 dashes
- Orange bitters, for extra depth1 dash
- Lime, to garnish (optional)1 twist
Method
- Chill a coupe or martini glass.
- Fill a shaker with ice cubes and add the gin, orange liqueur, lime juice, Angostura bitters and orange bitters.
- Shake hard for 10–15 seconds, until the drink is well chilled and diluted.
- Double-strain into the cold glass, so every ice shard and fragment of pulp is caught.
- Express the oils from a piece of lime peel over the drink and let the twist slip into the glass to garnish.
Pegu Club, Rangoon; recorded in The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930)
About this drink
The Pegu Club cocktail comes from the British officers' club of the same name in Rangoon, Burma, in the early twentieth century. It became world-famous when Harry Craddock included it in his Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930, and it has been a benchmark for gin-based sours ever since. It is known for its taut balance of gin, orange liqueur, lime and bitters: elegant and gently bitter without turning sharp.
