Disaronno, fresh lemon, a small bourbon backbone, real egg white, dry-shake then wet-shake. The cocktail you ordered when you were nineteen and didn’t know any better, made the way that finally justifies the choice.
Why you are pouring this tonight
The amaretto sour has a public relations problem that runs roughly from 1989 to 2018. Most adults over thirty-five had their first one at a Yellowglen-fuelled twenty-first in a Melbourne pub function room, and have spent the intervening decades politely declining the drink at every cocktail bar they have ever entered. They are not wrong to remember it as overly sweet, syrupy, and the colour of a children’s vitamin. But that drink was not really an amaretto sour. That drink was Disaronno poured into sour mix from a plastic gun. The actual amaretto sour, made with fresh lemon and real egg white and a small bourbon backbone, is one of the great cocktails of the modern bar canon. It is also the version that converts sceptics fastest.
The Jeffrey Morgenthaler 2012 recipe is the version every cocktail bar in Australia worth its bottle list now serves. The bourbon backbone (15ml of overproof Cask Strength, or a regular Wild Turkey 101) cuts the amaretto’s sweetness and gives the drink a dry finish; the egg white provides the velvet body; the fresh lemon delivers the acid. The proportions are 45ml amaretto, 22.5ml lemon, 15ml bourbon, half an egg white. Dry-shake hard, wet-shake hard with ice, double-strain into a chilled coupe. Three drops of Angostura on the foam. A Luxardo cherry on the rim. The drink that finally justifies the amaretto bottle on your shelf.
Use Disaronno Originale, the dark amber bottle with the squared shoulders. It is the standard amaretto in Australia, around $50 a bottle from Dan Murphy’s, and it is the bottle the recipe was designed around. Lazzaroni Amaretto is the Italian alternative if you can find it; it is slightly drier, with a more pronounced bitter-almond note. Avoid the cheaper supermarket amarettos; they are too sweet, too one-note, and the drink loses its structure.
For the bourbon, anything 90 proof or above works. Wild Turkey 101 at $55 is the everyday pour; an overproof bourbon (Booker’s at $130, or a Knob Creek 12 Year at $90) is the upgrade for someone who wants the bourbon backbone to actually push through. The bourbon is not optional. Skip it and the drink collapses into the sweet single-note amaretto-and-citrus situation that gave the cocktail its bad name in the first place.
What to pour it alongside
End of dinner, with a slice of dark chocolate or a piece of Italian almond biscotti. The amaretto’s bitter-almond note pairs with anything almond-coded; the drink is also remarkable next to a piece of mascarpone-topped tiramisu. Before dinner with a small bowl of spiced almonds also works as an aperitivo serve. The drink that quietly wins the room when nobody was expecting it to.
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Notes from the kitchen
The dry-shake is non-negotiable, same as for any sour. Egg white needs metal-on-metal friction without ice for the proteins to whip into a stable foam. Skip the dry-shake and the foam collapses within a minute. After the dry-shake, open the shaker, fill with cold ice, seal, wet-shake another 12 seconds. The cycle is 12+12. Anything less and the foam is thin; anything more and the drink is over-diluted.
Double-strain through a Hawthorne strainer and a fine sieve. The Hawthorne catches the ice; the fine sieve catches any small ice chips and whatever pulp came off the lemon. The drink should arrive crystal-clear under the foam dome, the liquid below an even amber. A cloudy drink suggests under-strained or over-shaken; pour back into the shaker, double-strain again.
The Angostura swirl on the foam is the signature finish. Three drops in a triangular pattern. Drag a cocktail pick from the centre outward through each drop, pulling them into a thin curving leaf shape. The pattern stays visible for the first few sips. The cherry on the rim is the optional flourish; a real Luxardo (the dark Italian cherry in dark syrup) is the only acceptable cherry. Skip the bright-red supermarket cocktail cherries; they belong in a cake decoration kit, not a cocktail.
Two things that go wrong
Drink is too sweet despite the bourbon
Your amaretto-to-lemon ratio is off, or your bourbon is under-proofed. Check the bourbon proof; an 80-proof bourbon (Jim Beam White) is too soft for this drink. Use a 90+ proof bourbon (Wild Turkey 101, Knob Creek). If still sweet, add another 5ml of fresh lemon and re-shake. The sweet-sour balance is what separates the modern amaretto sour from the Yellowglen-era version.
Foam is grey or watery
Your egg white is old or your dry-shake was too short. Use a fresh free-range egg (the foam from a 7-day-old supermarket cage egg is meaningfully worse than a 1-day-old farmer’s market egg). Dry-shake hard for a full 15 seconds if your foam is consistently weak. The shaker should sound different at 15 seconds than at 5; the contents have stopped sloshing and become a continuous mass.
Variations worth knowing
Amaretto sour with raspberry float
Float 15ml of fresh raspberry purée (or a quality raspberry liqueur like Chambord) on top of the finished drink. The purée sits on the foam in a deep ruby band, sinks slowly through. The drink becomes layered and visibly dramatic, the version for guests who want bar theatre.
Amaretto Stone Sour
Add 30ml of fresh orange juice to the standard recipe. The drink becomes longer, brighter, more brunch-friendly. The classic 1980s “stone sour” build, redeemed by fresh juice and the egg white.
Espresso amaretto sour
Add 30ml of cold espresso to the shaker. The drink becomes a coffee-amaretto crossbreed; the bitter espresso balances the sweet amaretto. The dessert-cocktail for someone who wanted both an espresso martini and an amaretto sour and refused to choose.
Leftovers and make ahead
There are no leftovers. The drink is built fresh, served immediately. The foam collapses within ten minutes; the lemon juice oxidises within thirty. If you have batched too many, drink them in quick succession with a friend; the drink is one of the rare cocktails that improves drink-by-drink as the second-shake technique sharpens.
Leftover egg yolks fold into a quick mayonnaise the next morning, or into a soft scrambled egg on toast at midnight. Leftover lemon juice freezes in ice-cube trays for the next round of sours. Leftover Disaronno keeps indefinitely on the shelf; one $50 bottle gets you twenty drinks.
The recipe
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