Bar-Style Gin Gimlet with Scratch Lime Cordial

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

The gimlet lives or dies on its lime cordial, so this version skips the neon bottled stuff and builds one from lime peel oleo-saccharum, fresh juice and a whisper of citric acid — the same trick craft cocktail bars use to get that rounded, almost tropical lime perfume that plain simple syrup and juice can't touch. Shaken hard with a juniper-forward London dry gin and double-strained, it lands ice-cold, silky and bracingly clean. The cordial takes 20 minutes of hands-on work, keeps for weeks, and makes about ten drinks.

Ingredients

• 6 limes, well scrubbed
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar (150 g)
• 1/2 cup fresh lime juice (from the zested limes, about 4 oz)
• 1/4 teaspoon citric acid (optional, for snap and shelf life)
• 1 pinch fine sea salt

• 4 oz London dry gin (Beefeater, Tanqueray, or Sipsmith)
• 1 1/2 oz lime cordial, from above
• 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
• large, hard ice cubes for shaking
• 2 wide lime peel strips, for garnish

Instructions

1. Make the oleo-saccharum: using a vegetable peeler, remove the zest from 5 of the limes in wide strips, taking as little white pith as possible. Drop the peels into a bowl or jar with the 3/4 cup sugar and toss with your fingers, pressing and rubbing the sugar into the peels for 1 to 2 minutes until it looks damp and smells intensely of lime.
2. Cover and leave at room temperature for 1 to 4 hours (2 is ideal). The sugar will draw the oils out of the peel and turn into a fragrant, syrupy slurry. Stir once or twice along the way.
3. Juice the zested limes plus the remaining whole lime to get 1/2 cup fresh juice. Strain out pulp and seeds through a fine-mesh sieve.
4. Warm 1/4 cup of the lime juice in a small saucepan over low heat just until steaming, about 2 minutes — do not boil. Pour it over the sugar-and-peel mixture and stir for 1 to 2 minutes until every grain of sugar dissolves.
5. Stir in the remaining 1/4 cup cold lime juice, the citric acid and the pinch of salt. Let the cordial steep with the peels for another 20 minutes, then strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean jar, pressing gently on the peels. You should have about 1 cup. Refrigerate; it keeps 3 weeks (2 weeks without the citric acid).
6. Chill two coupe or Nick and Nora glasses in the freezer for at least 10 minutes, or fill them with ice water while you mix.
7. Combine the 4 oz gin, 1 1/2 oz lime cordial and 1/2 oz fresh lime juice in a cocktail shaker. Fill three-quarters full with large ice cubes.
8. Shake hard for 12 to 15 seconds — you want the tin painfully cold and frosted over. Short, aggressive shakes chill and aerate better than long lazy ones.
9. Double-strain through the shaker's built-in strainer and a fine-mesh sieve into the chilled glasses; this catches ice shards so the drink stays crisp instead of watering down.
10. Twist a strip of lime peel over each glass to spray the oils across the surface, rub the rim with the peel, then drop it in or discard. Serve immediately, while a thin film of frost is still on the glass.

Chef's tips

Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

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