Amaretto Sour

The amaretto sour deserves a spot in today’s cocktail culture—and that bottle of amaretto need not stay exiled to the far reaches of your liquor cabinet. 

This take on the classic amaretto sour eliminates the shelf-stable sour mix that plagued the drink and instead uses a combination of freshly squeezed lemon juice along with lemon and orange peels, which are tossed into the cocktail shaker tin in a technique called a “regal shake.” Since amaretto is rather sweet on its own, our recipe testing showed it really wasn’t crucial to add a one-note sweet ingredient like sugar or simple syrup. (If you’re looking for a sweeter drink, though, you could add up to 2 tsp. oleo saccharum, a fragrant, concentrated sugar syrup made with the oils of orange and lemon peels.)

You’ll shake this cocktail in two stages—first, a dry shake, without ice, to emulsify the egg white and start the froth, and second, with ice, to chill and dilute properly. Note: The egg white softens the sharpness of the fresh lemon and makes the drink softly creamy, but raw egg is not recommended for various groups, including those with weakened immune systems.

To finish, a few drops of Angostura bitters go a long way to tie everything together, giving a more rounded, birch-bark dimension to the roasted-almond-skin elements that put the amaro in amaretto. 

A note on sourcing: A well-crafted amaretto (the Italian liqueur whose name means “a little bitter”) can be a beautifully complex nectar, with hints of toasted almond, candied fruits, and dark caramel. A bargain bottle of the stuff, on the other hand, can be bluntly sweet and uninspired. So it pays to seek out a label with a genuine Italian pedigree, whether you're planning to mix it into cocktails or drink it straight. Varieties hail from several regions, including Caffo (Calabria), Adriatico (Puglia), and Knight Gabriello (Tuscany), to name a few.