Tennessee Williams and the Ramos Fizz

Tennessee Williams is one of America’s best known and most celebrated playwrights. When you shout, “STELLA!!!” to the wind, you have him to thank for it. Mr. Williams also enjoyed the occasional (or frequent) libation. His cocktail of choice: the Ramos Fizz.

Tennessee Williams is known for The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth and the classic mentioned above, Streetcar Named Desire.

The Ramos Fizz heralds from New Orleans and harks back to 1888, two years before Jelly Roll Morton was born and thirteen years before the great Louis Armstrong joined us.

I believe Esquire magazine put it best:

If the Sidecar is jazz, the Ramos Fizz is ragtime…To sip a Ramos Fizz on a hot day is to step into a sepia-toned world peopled with slim, brown-eyed beauties who smell of magnolias and freshly laundered linen, and tall, mustachioed gentlemen who never seem to work and will kill you if you ask them why.

Ramon Fizz

Ingredients

2 ounces gin -- London dry gin is recommended
1 ounce heavy cream
1 egg whites
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce lime juice
2 teaspoons superfine sugar
2 to 3 drops orange flower water

Instructions

Combine in a chilled cocktail shaker with plenty of cracked ice, then shake viciously for at least one minute -- preferably two -- and strain into a chilled Collins glass. Top up with cold seltzer or club soda.

http://litwithatwist.com/writers-and-their-cocktails-tennessee-williams-and-the-ramos-fizz/

The one thing about this recipe is that it is strict! Do not deviate, do not substitute and if you order this at a bar, you may be disappointed.

Ramos Fizz Photo: Reese Lloyd