4 cl Vodka
1 cl De Kuyper Triple Sec
2 cl Finest Call Sugar Syrup
2 cl Lemon juice, freshly squeezed
Coat the edge of a cocktail glass with sugar and set aside, let the sugar dry and adhere to the glass. Pour the ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice cubes, shake meticulously and fine-strain into a pre-chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.
The Lemon Drop originated in San Francisco sometime in the 70s, on the corner of Broadway and Polk Streets at a favorite bar called Henry Africa’s. The Lemon Drop was most likely named after lemon drop candy, a sugar coated, lemon-flavored candy that is typically colored yellow and often shaped like a miniature lemon. The creator of the Lemon Drop was the proprietor of this historic watering hole was that he had opened in 1969: Norman Jay Hobday. Hobday would later change his name to Henry Africa. To serve his female clientele and to ensure that women kept coming back to his bar, Henry Africa had to come up with female-centric cocktails. In a great cocktail book published in 2015, Drinking the Devil’s Acre, its author, Duggan McDonnell explains Africa’s line of thinking: “Create a concept that packs the house with ladies and the guys will follow, packing the register with cash.” Since Africa believed that a classic cocktail glass looked lovely in a woman’s hand, he “unveiled the Lemon Drop to rousing success,” writes McDonnell. “At its core, the drink made quite a bit of sense – it was simply a vodka crusta. After the Lemon Drop was invented, the drink swiftly spread to many San Francisco bars, the world soon to follow. Hobday initially served his Lemon Drops in a cocktail glass, but in the early 1990s, bartenders often prepared it as a shooter or served in a shot glass.