Singapore Sling
Raffles' pink, disputed icon
- Method
- Shaken
- Style
- Tropical
- Glass
- Collins glass
- Time
- 5 min
Ingredients
- 45mlGinTanglin Singapore Gin recommended
No Gin? London Dry Gin — juniper forward, and what these recipes assume if you have not got a preference · Old Tom Gin — sweeter and rounder, the older style · Navy Strength Gin — a lot stronger, so save it for a clear afternoon
- 22.5mlCherry LiqueurCherry Heering recommended
- 7.5mlTriple SecLuxardo Triplum Triple Sec recommended
No Triple Sec? Dry Curaçao — drier, more bitter orange peel — a better drink in most classics, so pull back any other sugar slightly
- 7.5mlBénédictine
- 30mlPineapple Juice
No Pineapple Juice? Acid Adjusted Pineapple Juice — leave out any other citrus in the drink. It lands more like a sour, so you may need to balance the sweetness, but you could be onto a winner
- 22.5mlLime Juice
- 7.5mlGrenadine
- 1 dashAngostura
No Angostura? Old Fashioned Bitters — close to Ango, with the same spicy notes — just not the standard bottle
- Garnish
- Pineapple wedge and a cocktail cherry
Make it well
Shaken, properly.
Add all the ingredients to your with ice.
for 10-12 seconds. There's a lot going on in this one, so give it a proper shake to bring it all together.
Strain into a Collins or hurricane glass over fresh ice.
Garnish with a pineapple and a cocktail cherry for the full Raffles presentation.
On the palate
On the nose it's cherry and pineapple with the gin's juniper underneath. On tasting it reads fruity and approachable at first, and then you notice the structure holding it up, which is the gin and the Bénédictine doing quiet work in the background. The orange liqueur and grenadine round out the sweetness and give it that famous rosy colour. Made properly it's far more interesting than its neon tourist-drink reputation suggests. Made badly it's cordial. Don't make it badly.
Where it came from
Officially, the Singapore Sling was created around 1915 at Raffles Hotel in Singapore by bartender Ngiam Tong Boon, who Raffles credits with mixing up a drink that looked like an innocent fruit punch but carried the kick of a proper gin sling. Almost everything past that headline is disputed. The exact date shifts depending on the source, some say 1910, some 1913, Raffles' own materials aren't fully consistent either. The original recipe was never formally written down, and Ngiam died in 1918, just three years after supposedly inventing it, so the version served today is largely reconstructed from a recipe scrawled on the back of a bar receipt in 1936. Cocktail historian David Wondrich has also traced references to "pink slings for pale people" as far back as 1903, well before the Raffles story even begins. Whatever actually happened behind that bar, the pink, fruity drink with a secret kick has stayed famous for well over a century.
Keep pouring
If you like the Singapore Sling, try these
The bartender’s note
One drink, one story, one bottle worth buying.
Thursday evening, so you have time to shop. No more than that.