Whiskey Sour

The Whiskey Sour has no securely identified inventor or birth date. Its history belongs to the older sour family: a base spirit balanced with citrus and sugar, then diluted with water or ice. That formula resembles a small, individual punch. A frequent claim places the Whiskey Sour’s first recipe in Jerry Thomas’s 1862 "Bar-tenders’ Guide". The first-edition text does document the sour form, but its “Fixes and Sours” section gives Brandy Sour, Gin Sour, and Santa Cruz Sour (rum). Notably, a whiskey sour was absent. Thomas’s book was nonetheless foundational: the New York Public Library describes it as the first true U.S. cocktail book and notes how it put bartenders’ orally transmitted knowledge into print.

The earliest known printed mention of a whisky sour is instead a January 4, 1870, item in Wisconsin’s Waukesha Plain Dealer. It mentions someone ordering “another whisky sour” without explaining the drink—evidence that the name was already familiar, but not a recipe or proof of who invented it. By the late 19th century, the sour had become a fixture of American drinking, its popularity greatly increased by the addition of a red wine (Claret) float - this version is now known as the New York Sour. In 1922, Robert Vermiere mentioned that "a few drops of white of egg improves all sours", indicating that the practice of adding egg white to sours was already in existence prior to his writing. The craft cocktail revival of the 2000s brought both the red wine and egg white variants into popularity.