Whiskey Sour
Bourbon, lemon and sugar: the American sour at its plainest and best
Before anyone wrote it down, somebody in a saloon squeezed a lemon over whiskey and sugar and called it fair. The Whiskey Sour is punch shrunk to a single glass: corn-sweet bourbon, sharp lemon, enough sugar to make peace between them. Shake it with egg white and it rises under a cap of pale foam, soft as a pillow and tasting of lemon curd. Shake it without, and it is the same honest drink with its collar undone. Either way it has been one of the fixed points of American drinking since the 1860s.
A shaken bourbon sour: bourbon, fresh lemon juice and simple syrup, with optional egg white dry-shaken for a silky foam. Served over ice or up.
Ingredients
- 2 oz / 60 ml Bourbon
- 0.75 oz / 22 ml Lemon juice, fresh
- 0.75 oz / 22 ml Simple syrup (1:1)
- 0.5 oz / 15 ml Egg whiteoptional
- Technique
- Shaken
- Glass
- Rocks
- Ice
- Large Cube
- Prep
- 5 min · Intermediate
- Garnish
- Lemon wheel and a brandied cherry; optional drops of Angostura bitters on the foam.
- Approximate strength
- about 16% ABV in the glass (Estimate. Ethanol from 60 ml bourbon at 40% is 24 ml; pre-dilution volume with egg white is 119 ml; assumed 25% dilution from the shake gives about 149 ml and roughly 16% ABV. Without egg white the figure is about 18%.)
- Allergens
- Egg
Method
Chill a rocks glass with ice and water, or chill a coupe in the freezer if serving up.
Cold glass first; the foam needs a cool place to settle.
Measure the bourbon, lemon juice, simple syrup and, if using, the egg white into a shaker tin.
Whiskey, lemon, sugar: the oldest argument in the bar, settled again.
If using egg white, seal the shaker without ice and dry shake hard for 15 seconds so the protein whips into a foam. Skip this step if making the drink without egg.15s
A dry shake, loud and empty, and the egg white turns to cloud.
Open the shaker, fill two-thirds with cubed ice, seal again and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds until the tin frosts.12s
Now the ice: shake until the cold climbs up your hand.
Empty the chilled glass and add a large ice cube, or leave it empty for an up serve. Double strain the drink through a fine mesh strainer and let the foam settle for 20 seconds before garnishing.20s
Strain it slow and watch the foam rise to meet the rim.
Garnish with a lemon wheel and a brandied cherry on a pick. If you made it with egg white, a few drops of Angostura bitters dragged across the foam with a toothpick are a traditional touch.
A wheel of lemon, a dark cherry, and three red drops drawn across the cloud.
Flavor notes
Lemon and vanilla-caramel bourbon on the nose, with a faint toasted-sugar edge when the egg white foam carries the bitters. Tart and sweet in balance; the foam makes the texture creamy and softens the acidity, while the egg-free version is sharper and cleaner. A short finish of oak and lemon pith. Please enjoy responsibly, and use pasteurized egg white where the drink is served to guests who are pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised.
Variations
- Boston Sour: The headline spec with the egg white made mandatory, served up in a coupe.
- New York Sour: The headline spec without egg, shaken and strained over ice, then 0.5 oz (15 ml) of dry red wine (a Shiraz or Malbec) poured slowly over the back of a spoon so it floats.
- Ward 8: 2 oz (60 ml) rye or bourbon, 0.5 oz (15 ml) lemon, 0.5 oz (15 ml) orange juice and 0.25 oz (7.5 ml) grenadine, shaken and served up, no egg.
- Classic Formula Without Egg: The headline spec minus egg white, shaken 12 seconds and served over cubed ice with a lemon wheel.
Substitutions
- Bourbon: Rye whiskey · Spicier and drier; the classic nineteenth-century sour would often have been rye. Same 2 oz (60 ml).
- Egg white: Aquafaba (the liquid from a can of chickpeas) · Use 0.75 oz (22 ml) and dry shake 20 seconds; the foam is slightly looser but egg-free. Commercial foamers also work; follow the label dose.
- Simple syrup: Honey syrup (1:1) or rich demerara syrup · Honey leans toward the Gold Rush; demerara adds molasses depth. Use 0.5 oz (15 ml) for either.
- Lemon juice: Half lemon, half fresh orange juice · The softer citrus profile of many mid-century recipes; keep the total at 0.75 oz (22 ml) and reduce syrup slightly.
Without alcohol
Shake 2 oz (60 ml) of a zero-proof oak-aged whiskey alternative, 0.75 oz (22 ml) lemon juice, 0.5 oz (15 ml) simple syrup and 0.75 oz (22 ml) aquafaba: dry shake 20 seconds, then shake with ice and double strain over a large cube. A barspoon of strong cold black tea adds tannin where the whiskey would have.
Batching
For 8 drinks combine 16 oz (480 ml) bourbon, 6 oz (180 ml) fresh lemon juice and 6 oz (180 ml) simple syrup in a bottle; refrigerate and use within four hours of juicing. Shake each 3.5 oz (105 ml) portion to order with 0.5 oz (15 ml) egg white if wanted; egg white does not batch well and must be shaken per drink. For a pitcher serve without egg, add 5 oz (150 ml) cold water to the batch, hold in the freezer for an hour and pour over large ice.
Origin and sources
The sour is a punch scaled down to one glass: spirit, citrus, sugar and water. A Sour appears on an 1856 hand-written drinks list from Mart Ackermann's saloon in Toronto, and Jerry Thomas's 1862 Bartender's Guide gives the first printed sour recipes, for brandy, gin and Santa Cruz rum, dissolving the sugar in a little water before the spirit goes in. The whiskey version was already being ordered by name the same year: the Syracuse Daily Courier and Union mentioned 'whisky sour' twice in the autumn of 1862, a Denver saloon price card listed it at twenty cents in 1864, and a Philadelphia essay used it as a character type in 1865. The Waukesha Plain Dealer item of January 1870, usually cited as the oldest mention, records a drinker ordering another whisky sour as something that needed no explanation. By 1879 the Atlanta Constitution could treat the drink as a national habit. David Wondrich describes it as one of the cardinal points of American drinking from the 1860s to the 1960s. Egg white is a later refinement, known as the Boston Sour; a red wine float makes the New York Sour.
Contested: Two things are commonly misstated. First, that Jerry Thomas printed a Whiskey Sour in 1862: his sours section covers brandy, gin and rum, and the whiskey version enters later editions, so the 1862 claim belongs to the sour family rather than the whiskey recipe. Second, that the 1870 Wisconsin newspaper is the earliest mention: newspaper searches by Barry Popik turn up the drink in print from 1862, which this record cites while noting that these are incidental references rather than recipes. A 1962 Argentine university publication, citing a Peruvian newspaper, credits a ship's steward named Elliott Stubb with inventing the whisky sour in Iquique in 1872; the American citations predate that by a decade, so this record treats the Iquique story as popular legend. Egg white has no single documented date of entry; it is absent from the nineteenth-century printings and is treated here as an optional modern-era refinement.
- How well do you know the Whiskey Sour?, Punch · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon-Vivant's Companion (1862), full text, Internet Archive (1862) · primary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- The Bar-Tender's Guide (1887 edition), full text, Internet Archive (1887) · primary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Sour cocktails: history, Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Whiskey Sour (newspaper citations), The Big Apple (Barry Popik) · primary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Whiskey Sour (Difford's recipe), Difford's Guide · secondary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
- Whiskey sour, Wikipedia · tertiary source, retrieved 2026-10-11
Fact check: verified · Credit: The Fabled Pour editorial team