If you love desserts with rich meringue or cappuccinos that leave you with a bubbly milk mustache, then you’ll love egg white cocktails. Believe it or not, eggs don’t add flavor to a drink, instead they add texture and richness. When incorporated into your drink, egg whites transform from silky gooey slime into a rich creamy layer of foam. 

They also work to break down acidity of citrus in a cocktail to smooth out the flavor through protein unravelling. Inside a cocktail shaker, the egg’s proteins separate and stretch out. So when a mixologist combines egg white with other ingredients in a shaker, they’re actually whipping air into the proteins by shaking it back and forth. One end of the egg white protein attracts air molecules, the other attracts water molecules; joining air bubbles with cocktail ingredients.

While it may sound advanced, making egg white cocktails is incredibly simple and well worth the effort.

1. First, crack the egg and carefully allow the egg white to separate and spill into your cocktail shaker. Discard the egg yolk. 
2. Add the other ingredients to the shaker, whether it be spirits, fruit juices, or syrups.
3. Dry shake – in order to get the egg to froth the way you want it to, you actually need to shake all of the ingredients without ice – this is called a dry shake. Go ahead and shake for at least a full minute to allow the liquid to be agitated and bubbly. For even more foam, you can even throw in a protein shaker ball or the spring from your Hawthorne strainer to agitate further.  
4. Add ice to the shaker and shake again. This time, the drink is being chilled and provides the right amount of dilution to the drink. 
5. Using a Hawthorne and cone strainer, strain the cocktail into your desired glass. You’ll be left with a velvety cocktail with a beautiful white foam top. 

Recently we’ve been seeing some mixologists actually do the inverse of this technique, called the reverse dry shake, where the ingredients are first shaken with ice, then strained and shaken again without. This will often produce a higher foam, but less creamy texture, so it’s worth trying both ways to see which method you prefer.

Surely your mother told you to never consume raw eggs for fear of getting salmonella. Or was it a trick to keep you from eating all of the cookie dough before it could make it into the oven? While your mother was right, there’s very little to worry about. In modern times, the likelihood of becoming sick with salmonella from egg white is very minimal, as long as the eggs are stored well. 

But there are some measures you can take to ensure the safety of using eggs in cocktails. If you’re amongst those who are squeamish about raw egg in their drink, just be sure to keep eggs cold before using them, wash your hands and the outside of the shell, and give the egg a quick sniff for good measure before mixing up your drink.

Some cocktails include a whole egg, as in both yolk and white. Incorporating each will result in both a creamy and silky texture, but have more of an egg flavor. This is a great method to use when making flip cocktails because it adds an extra element of richness to the drink. Unsurprisingly, other drinks include the egg yolk, but no egg white, such as egg nogs and milk punches, to give the cocktail an even more eggy flavor.

If you’re vegan, or allergic to eggs, you can still get the rich texture of an egg white drink with easy substitutes. Some you may already have in your pantry, others are available from online retailers. 

• Aquafaba: the water leftover from canned chickpeas. 
• Fee Foam: has a neutral taste and creates foam without egg products. 
• Ms. Better’s Bitters Miraculous Foamer: a 4 ounce bottle equals over 100 egg whites.
• Versawhip: a foaming agent used by pastry chefs.

Jerry Thomas, godfather to modern mixology, first published the egg white cocktail in his Bartender’s Guide back in 1862, but the recipe was knocking around for a good hundred years before publication. The gist of the recipe hasn’t changed in the past 160 years. If you order a Whiskey Sour in any cocktail bar these days you’ll get the same combination of egg white, sugar, lemon, and whiskey.

In 1888, the infamous Ramos Gin Fizz took a team of New Orleans bartenders 15 minutes to shake sky-high foam they’d lift over the rim of a tall collins glass with soda water. You can still order one at the Roosevelt Hotel’s Sazerac Bar in the French Quarter. Here are a few more classic egg white cocktails:

• Pisco Sour: pisco, lemon, sugar, and egg white.
• Clover Club: gin, lemon, raspberry syrup, and egg white.

Bartending at home gives you limitless freedom for creativity. Take the structure of Jerry Thomas’ original recipe and a carton of eggs and substitute, tweak, add and subtract ingredients to create your own signature egg white cocktail.