Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces gin (such as Taaka or Tanqueray)
1 tablespoon simple syrup
2 ounces half-and-half
1 egg white
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 ounce orange flower water
1 ounce lemon-lime soda
Orange wedge, for garnish 

Directions
Add first 6 ingredients to bottom part of cocktail shaker. Blend with stick or immersion blender for 30 seconds. Partly fill highball or old-fashioned glass with three or four large ice cubes. Pour in drink. Top with soda. Garnish with orange wedge. Serves 1.

Source:  Epicurious Photo: Elissa Wiehn
Marvin Allen,
The Carousel Bar, New Orleans, Louisiana

Ramos Gin Fizz
In honor of the fourth annual Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, an event 
that is good, sloshy (and edifying) fun in the possible birthplace of that 
spiritous potion that we call the cocktail, we’ve appointed this local original as 
this month’s tipple.

Also called the New Orleans Fizz, the drink was created in 1888 by Henry Ramos, 
owner of the Imperial Cabinet Saloon and later the Stag Saloon. All you need to 
make it are several common bar ingredients, good-quality orange flower water 
(try the excellent A. Monteux brand, available at bevmo.com), and a few strong 
men and women. Why the labor force? Because the Ramos Fizz needs to be shaken 
like mad.

Some claim that it takes five minutes of furious shaking to emulsify the cream, egg, 
and spirit and produce a properly frothy drink. Indeed, Ramos himself employed a 
brigade of bartenders, according to Gary Regan’s invaluable The Joy of Mixology, "who
passed the shaker from one to the next until the drink reached the desired consistency." 
To test the usefulness of this method, Regan teamed up with two friends to shake the
drink for the full five minutes — "by the end, our hands stuck to the shaker," he told me — 
and insists that you can get just as good a product (without the pain) by using a blender, 
a tip he took from Charles H. Baker Jr.’s The Gentleman’s Companion. Before you decry 
this as sacrilege, remember:  Regan is an old hand.