Profile
The Ping-Pong Cocktail is a sloe gin sour with egg white and very little else. Sloe gin is gin steeped with sloe berries and sugar, which makes it closer to a liqueur than a spirit, so it carries both the sweetness and the fruit and leaves the recipe with almost nothing left to do.
That is why the lemon is so restrained. A quarter ounce against two ounces of sloe gin is a fraction of what a standard sour takes, and the egg white is doing structural work rather than flavor work, building the foam that turns a sweet red liqueur into something that reads as a cocktail. The drink dates to the early twentieth century, when sloe gin was far more common on a back bar than it is now.
Glass: Cocktail glass | Strength: Medium | Serves: 1 | Prep Time: 4 minutes
Bartenders tip: Dry shake first without ice to build the foam, then shake again with ice to chill it. One pass with ice gives you a thin, disappointing head. A quarter ounce of lemon is sparing even for sloe gin, so taste it and push toward a half ounce if it reads flat, which it often does with the sweeter modern bottlings. Use pasteurized egg whites if raw egg is a concern, since they whip nearly as well. Good sloe gin matters more than anything else here, as the cheap stuff tastes like cough syrup and there is nowhere for it to hide.
