This Lady Is Tart in Taste

Long before Dr. Atkins promoted a carb-free regimen, actress Jayne Mansfield was following a similar one. To maintain her rather improbable figure, she ate just one meal a day, and every day the same meal at that -- a well-done steak for dinner. It's not clear whether she kept the excess pounds off because her diet was protein-rich, or just because it dampened her enthusiasm for eating: "I really don't like meat," she told a reporter in 1961. The one bright spot in her culinary routine: "I do like a cocktail," she said, "a pink lady, before dinner."
[Jayne Mansfield]
Jayne Mansfield and husband Mickey Hargitay enjoy a cocktail.

Mansfield styled herself something of a pink lady. Her Sunset Boulevard manse was pink, inside and out. Dubbed the "Pink Palace," it even featured pink fluorescent lighting. No wonder she chose to drink Pink Ladies. And that has been a problem -- though a tasty drink worthy of inclusion in the cocktail canon, the Pink Lady has found its reputation dogged by association with a dubious aesthetic.

Newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler would win a Pulitzer Prize in 1941 for his articles on big labor's racketeers, and after the war he scourged the red menace in Hollywood. But in 1938 he took aim at the drinks ladies were apt to order in a bar -- whether a Sidecar, a Honeydew, or a Brandy Alexander. But worst of all, Pegler said, was the Pink Lady, which he jokingly described as a drink made of "shaving lotion, buttermilk and strawberry extract."

There have been worse concoctions called "Pink Lady." A favorite skid-row dram was once made by heating Sterno cans -- when the paraffin melted, it could be separated from the alcohol, which poured off with a pinkish hue. With a wry nod to the highfalutin, hoboes called the drink "Pink Lady." Submariners in World War II enjoyed (if you can call it that) a similar cocktail. The fuel powering torpedoes was straight alcohol, manufactured by the same distilleries that had been making whiskey before Pearl Harbor. When the Navy brass learned that sailors were draining the fish to get at the "torpedo juice," they had a noxious red chemical added to the fuel to discourage the practice. Not to be denied, the men found that a loaf of bread, with the heels cut off, made an admirable filter. In one end they poured the red torpedo juice; out the other end came a marginally less noxious tipple they named "Pink Lady."

And how is the unironic drink of the same name made? In its prime, there was no shortage of competing recipes.
PINK LADY

1½ oz gin
¾ oz applejack (apple brandy)
½ oz fresh lemon juice
¼ to ½ oz grenadine (to taste)
1 egg white (fresh or pasteurized)
Shake with ice and strain into a stemmed cocktail glass.
TORPEDO JUICE

Same as above, but drop the egg white.

"Have you ever made a 'Pink Lady'?" asked the newspaper ad copy for Fleischmann's dry gin in 1934. "It's that popular new cocktail with the white foamy top -- that slips down your throat so smoothly, so quickly you hardly realize it's gone -- except for the mild pleasant glow that steals over you." The Fleishmann folks turned to Freddie Roth, "chief mixologist" of New York's Roosevelt Hotel, to show how the drink is made. He used the juice of half a lime, an equal amount of grenadine, a tablespoon of sweet cream and a generous jigger of gin.

A few years later, Seagram's promoted its King Arthur Gin with a recipe from another New York bartender, Ray Teller. His Pink Lady called for the juice of a whole lemon, one tablespoon of grenadine, a teaspoon of cream and gin.

Neither recipe was correct. Though it became common to use cream to approximate the milky froth of a Pink Lady, the proper construction of the cocktail calls for an egg white. And though the drink is indeed anchored with gin, that isn't the only spirit in the mix. With gin alone, the Pink Lady can hardly be distinguished from the Clover Club -- gin, lemon or lime juice, grenadine and an egg white. What made the Pink Lady distinct was the addition of American apple brandy. The most venerable brand, Laird's -- distilled in New Jersey since 1780 -- is still widely available, and it is the essential ingredient in a proper Pink Lady.

Apple brandy is not to be confused with modern products like Pucker apple liqueur. Applejack is not sugary-sweet. Unless you have a heavy hand with the grenadine, the Pink Lady turns out remarkably dry-tart, surprising for a cocktail so long dismissed as a girly drink.

Which leads me to believe that the Pink Lady's reputation is a function less of the drink's taste than of its name. In his book "Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails," Ted Haigh laments that because of the exaggerated femininity of its name, no self-respecting man has ever bellied up to a bar to order a Pink Lady -- at least not for himself. Mr. Haigh suggests the drink should be rechristened the "Secret Cocktail."

I have another idea for a unisex alternative to the Pink Lady. Drop the egg white and you get a fine gin and applejack sour that we can name with a nod at the submariners' cocktail of convenience -- Torpedo Juice. Such a drink even has the virtue of sharing a resemblance to an old cocktail called the Torpedo, which was made of applejack, cognac and a dash of gin. Shake it well and strain -- though not through a loaf of bread -- into a cocktail glass.

By ERIC FELTEN
March 31, 2007

• Email me at eric.felten@wsj.com.