Message 23741 of 39188 in General Discussion

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> Well, with the Pisco Sour we have the exception to the rule, but is 
> there really a rule to begin with? Yes, we all know that personally 
> we have been taught to use lemon juice in a sour, but why? 

Essentially we've all been taught to use lemon juice in a sour because that's 
what the oigional recipe called for (The "sour" apears in Jerry Thomas' Bon 
vivants companion or how to mix drinks). 
 Drinks recipes are written down (in books or other formats) so as to promote 
consistency in their production. Whoever first created the combination of 
spirit, lemon and sugar decided on calling their creation a "sour" (or that's 
what it became known as) and in order to consistently reproduce that same 
drink, with that same taste lemon juice was required. You could make a similar 
drink (maybe a better tasting drink even) using an alternative citrus juice or 
sour ingrediant but it wouldn't be the same "sour" that origionally coined the 
name as the alternative ingrediant would change the taste distinctly enough 
for it to require a differant name, think of a rum sour using lime instead of 
lemon, is it still a "rum sour" or does it's taste change enough to change its 
name to a "Daquiri" to distinguish between the two?  The fact that the name 
"sour" denotes a combination of spirit, lemon juice and sugar is confusing as 
"sour" is also a description of how it tastes, we wouldn't be having this 
discussion if the combo was called something more random and less descriptive. 
You can change the lemon to an alternative and have a "sour whiskey cocktail" 
but it won't be a "whiskey sour cocktail".

Shouldn't 
> each cocktail we make have a certain balance/ Harmony/ Dynamic. And 
> this I don't feel is best served by blindly dumping lemon juice in 
> every drink with the name sour on it. The spirit itself, and the 
> characteristics of that spirit, should dictate which sour is used. 

 I agree that each drink we make should be balanced, harmonious and dynamic 
but we work within the confines of the recipes our customers expect from their 
drinks given names, have you ever tried making a balanced, harmonious, dynamic 
long island iced tea? I think it tastes better if you remove all the 
ingrediants except the rum and coke and sub the sour for lime juice but my 
customers tend to differ. They prefer it the origional way (in their 
ignorance) and so that's how I make them (all theoretical as we don't actually 
serve LIITs in my bar). For better or worse (in taste terms) the generic 
citrus in a "sour" is lemon juice. The origional recipe calls for lemon juice 
and people ordering the drink have a right to expect lemon juice for that 
reason. A drink utilising a differant form of "sour" ingrediant to enhance the 
spirit used and its characteristics may well be an improvement on a generic 
sour in taste terms but it ceases to be a "sour". Opinions differ and if it 
was left to each individual bartender to decide on the best sour ingrediant 
used then the cocktail would have no consistency and you'd get a differant 
drink each time it was  oredered. For that reason if you change the 
ingrediants you change the name, hence daquiri, bacardi cocktail, margarita, 
side car, clover club, aviation, cosmopolitan etc etc the list gos on. These 
drinks all work around a sour principle but have ingrediants added, removed or 
substituted to make the drink significantly differant enough to require a 
differant name.

-- 
"Manners maketh the man, Bourbon, vermouth and bitters maketh the Manhattan"