Ramos Gin Fizz Recipe

Many pre-prohibition cocktails involve simple recipes with five ingredients or fewer. The Ramos Gin Fizz isn’t one of those drinks.

Its creator, Henry Charles Ramos, took the simple gin fizz concept to new heights by adding orange flower water to a recipe that originally required twelve minutes of vigorous shaking. The New Orleans barman initially crafted the complicated cocktail at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon in 1888 and continued to craft Ramos Gin Fizzes at The Stag until the start of Prohibition ended the drink’s reign.

Discover more of our favorite Pre-Prohibition cocktails.

New Orleans locals adored Ramos’ frothy cocktail. In fact, some likened the drink to lemon meringue pie. The Roosevelt Hotel bought the rights to the drink in 1935 and it’s currently a signature cocktail in the hotel’s The Sazerac Bar. However, for better or worse, bartenders at the hotel bar and around New Orleans have slightly smaller shoulders since they no longer shake Ramos Gin Fizz cocktails for a full 12 minutes.

Discover the most iconic New Orleans cocktails as well as the city’s most iconic bars. Then explore the best Mardi gras cocktails.

The Ramos Gin Fizz cocktail bucks the classic cocktail playbook with an ingredient list that exceeds five items. These is the full list of ingredients you need to craft the classic New Orleans cocktail at home:

Gin is the only liquor in the classic Ramos Gin Fizz recipe. We like to use Citadelle’s dry gin in this and other cocktail recipes. The French gin has 19 botanicals and comes in a pretty blue bottle.

You can and should use your favorite gin when you craft this recipe in your home.

Discover our favorite gin cocktails.

Once you assemble the Ramos Fizz ingredients, you’ll need to gather the following simple bar tools:

You can improvise if you’re missing any or all of these bar tools. For example, you can use a small angled measuring cup instead of a jigger.

Discover 10 essential bar tools for home mixologists.

The first step is to measure the gin, cream, lemon juice, lime juice and simple syrup. We use a Japanese jigger to measure each of these liquids to ensure accurate measurements and minimize spillage.

Purchase a Japanese jigger if you don’t have a jigger or want an inexpensive upgrade.

Pour the liquids directly into a shaker after you measure each. We use a Boston shaker for this and other cocktail recipes. While we own other shakers, this is our go-to shaker since it doesn’t leak and goes right into the dishwasher after we use it.

Purchase a Boston shaker from Amazon if you don’t have a shaker or want an inexpensive upgrade.

Crack an egg and separate the egg white. The egg white goes into the shaker too.

Raw Egg White
We’re comfortable using raw egg white since we have access to fresh eggs at our local markets. However, you can use pasteurized egg white or aquafaba instead. If you’re not familiar with aquafaba, it’s the liquid in every can of chick peas.

Measure the orange blossom water and pour the fragrant distilled liquid into the shaker.

Flex your muscles and grab a timer – it’s shake time.

We stated above that the Ramos Gin Fizz is labor intensive and we weren’t exaggerating. This recipe requires the following two part shaking process:

First, dry shake the liquids without ice for 20 seconds. The dry shake causes the egg white to emulsify.

Pro Tip
Don’t cheat on this step. On our first attempt, we added too much ice and didn’t shake long enough. The cocktail tasted good but had the wrong consistency.

Strain the shaken mixture into a highball glass.

The most difficult aspect of crafting a Ramos Gin Fizz is finding orange blossom water. Here are some ideas if you have trouble sourcing the integral ingredient or if you’re uncomfortable ingesting raw egg white:

Ramos Fizz FAQs