Shaken, soda-topped, foamy
The Fizz family
A sour shaken hard — often with egg white — then topped with soda and served short with a foam head.
A fizz is a sour that has been shaken and then lengthened with soda, traditionally served in a smaller glass without ice so the foam head sits proud of the rim. The Ramos Gin Fizz is the family's showpiece and its most notorious labour.
The distinction from a Collins is real and easy to remember: a Collins is built long over ice and stays sharp; a fizz is served short, foamy, and meant to be drunk quickly.
The formula
Spirit · citrus · sugar · optional egg white — shaken hard, topped with soda, served short without ice.
What makes a drink one of these
- Shaken, not built — the aeration is the point.
- Topped with soda after shaking, never shaken with it.
- Often includes egg white for a stable foam.
- Served short, traditionally without ice in the glass.
The foam, and how it actually forms
Egg white's proteins trap air during the shake and hold it as a fine, stable foam. A dry shake — shaking without ice first, then again with it — builds a denser head, because the proteins emulsify better before the mixture gets cold.
Aquafaba works in the same way for anyone avoiding egg, though it needs a slightly longer shake.
Show your working
What's established about this family
History claims graded the same way the rest of the site grades them.
- documented
The Ramos Gin Fizz originates in late nineteenth-century New Orleans.
Attested in contemporary accounts of Henry Ramos's bar.
Supported by contemporary printed sources — a dated book, menu, newspaper or legal record.
- widely-reported
The original called for a twelve-minute shake.
Frequently repeated with varying durations. The drink genuinely requires an unusually long shake; the specific figure is folklore-adjacent and varies by source.
Consistently repeated across reputable modern drinks writing, but without a contemporary source we can point to.
The family
4 recipes
Every recipe on the site built to this structure.
Next door
Related families
How this structure connects to the rest of the canon.
Does the structure hold?
What these recipes are actually built from
The family is an editorial judgement. This is the independent structural read of the same recipes, worked out from their components — shown because the two agreeing is worth more than either claim on its own.
Sour-structured
4 of 4Something sour and something sweet held in balance over a base — the structure behind the whole sour family and everything descended from it.
Every recipe in this family reads the same way structurally, which is about as clean as this gets — the editorial grouping and the component arithmetic agree completely.
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