Super Cordial: Sweet & Sour Mix Made Right!

Hi, Friends of Cocktails! You might think the infamous Sweet & Sour mix was born in the 70’s, together with the bright green Midori, but the first sweetened concentrated fruit juice was patented way back 1867 as Rose’s Lime Cordial. Created by Lauchlan Rose, this ingredient was opart of the original Gimlet, but it also revolutionied how the British Navy used lime juice to fight off scurvy as it would last lonver during long voyages.

The bottled combination of sugar and citrus would take the cocktail world by the throat only a century later, with Sweet & Sour mix becoming the king behind the bar in the 1980’s and 90’–some people call that the dark ages of cocktails and bottled citrus is a big part of that. People describe it as very sweet, with a bright, Gatorade-like neon green color, and an artificial, oxidized citrus taste. Who knows how much of that memory is PTSD from having too many Amaretto Sours in those days.

Store-bought sweet&sour these days doesn’t have that bright green color, but the bottle is still as imposing as ever. Its ingredients are a mix of lemon concentrate, different citrus flavorings, fresh juice, and preservatives. One thing that’s certain is that these things made the bartender's life easy. No need to squeeze citrus, you had a single bottle that did the job of two or more ingredients and it was consistent. So can we find a way to keep that, without sacrificing brightness and freshness?

We’ll find out, but first let’s test out the bottle of Sweet & Sour as intended, this time making a staple cocktail from the 80’s and 90’s: the Midori Sour. It’s Cocktail Time!

The Midori Sour

● 45mL · 1.5oz Midori

● 45mL · 1.5oz Super Cordial

● Lemon Wheel Garnish

I'll make this in a shaker, but I even saw a bunch of recipes where they build it straight in the glass, and even add a small amount of soda water. I’m just shaking it and straining over ice, and garnishing with a lemon wheel, but a bright pink cherry was a popular option as well. Cheers to the decade I was born in!

That neon color makes an impression, but all I taste is melon candy. Very sweet, with a hit of sour, no brightness–we can do better. This feeling of improvement was at the core of the cocktail renaissance, where fresh juices and classic recipes came back in full force.

The bar where I started my cocktail journey just used house made sweet&sour mix. It was a simple equal parts mix of lemon juice, sugar, and water, without using a scale, so it really was a “speed and simplicity” over precision. Even looking back, it would be better if we mixed lemon and lime juices, to cover the flavor profile of more sour cocktails, instead of ignoring lime altogether.

But we’re still forgetting about freshness. These sour mixes would then be used for days, with citrus juice notoriously losing freshness quickly. That of course brings us to Super Juice, the revolutionary technique that made it possible to waste less citrus, save money and batch sour cocktails days in advance, all without losing on the freshness of your citrus juice.

So today we’ll build off of that, creating Super Cordial. But we’re not only combining the sour and sweet parts of your cocktails into one bottle, we’re also bringing together things that used to be opposites: convenience and long shelf life–all without sacrificing freshness and balance. One crafted ingredient, for all your sours, that we’ll then put to the test by making a Whiskey Sour and the Daiquiri.

Super Cordial

● 11g Lime Peels

● 11g Lemon Peels

● 400g Water

● 220 Sugar

● 120mL · 4oz Vodka

● 1.2g Salt

● 19.2g Citric Acid

● 9.4g Malic Acid

● 0.3g Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)

To start, wash and peel citrus fruits with declared edible peels, making sure to avoid getting too much of the pith. We’ll add these to a blender, alongside the rest of the ingredients, and if you want a fully non-alcoholic Super Cordial, you can replace the vodka with water. I’ll keep it this time to extend the shelf life, but the added vodka also makes sure you don’t overdilute your cocktails–which can be especially useful when using low proof ingredients like Midori as the base.

Blend on high speed for about one minute. Once the Super Cordial is fully blended just strain the liquid through a muslin cloth to remove the solids. Don’t rush this step, but you can give it a gentle squeeze at the end, to extract as much flavor as possible. Now all that’s left is to pour the finished cordial into a clean bottle and add a label. You can store this in the fridge, where it will stay fresh for weeks as we made sure not to add any of the lemon or lime juice.

If you need to make larger amounts of Super Cordial too, you can check out the cordial calculator on kevinkos.com, now open to everyone with a 4-day free trial. Before we test this side by side with its rivals, including a combination of freshly squeezed juice and simple syrup, let’s first show how easy it is to make a variety of sour cocktails by using Super Cordial, starting with the Daiquiri. 

Sweet & Sour Daiquiri

● 60mL · 2oz Rum

● 37.5mL · 1.25oz Super Cordial

I’ll simply combine the rum and Super Cordial in a chilled shaker, along with plenty of ice. Then shake up the cocktail to chill and dilute it, before double straining it into a chilled Nick & Nora glass. It’s really that easy, and it tastes just as good. So with the time we saved, let’s give another cocktail a try, the Whiskey Sour.

Sweet & Sour Whiskey Sour

● 60mL · 2oz Bourbon

● 37.5mL · 1.25oz Super Cordial

● 15mL · 0.5oz VeggWhite

The ratio for spirit and cordial is exactly the same, 2:1.25, but keeping with the theme of “fast & easy without sacrificing quality”, I’ll use Vegg White instead of egg white. This is a vegan egg white alternative that you can use by just shaking up the bottle before adding it to your cocktails. As an added plus, you won’t need to dry shake this Whiskey Sour, so it’s ready in just as little time as the Daiquiri. 

But the real test of Super Cordial is now to test it side-by-side in cocktails made with its alternatives. We already talked about two of them at the start–the store bought option which claims to be “the #1 selling sweet & sour in the USA”, and the house-made, 4 day old sweet&sour mix from a cocktail bar. The fourth option is the purist choice, a combination of freshly squeezed citrus juice and simple syrup.

I’ll test them in the purest gin sour, the Gimlet, that even has cordial in its original recipe, with Rose’s Lime cordial used.

Gimlet Base

● 60mL · 2oz Gin

The Test

37.5mL · 1.25oz Super Cordial

or 37.5mL · 1.25oz Sweet & Sour Mix + 2 drops 20% Saline Solution

or 37.5mL · 1.25oz Housemade Sweet & Sour + 2 drops 20% Saline Solution

or 22.5mL · 0.75oz Simple Syrup + 22.5mL · 0.75oz 1:1 Mix of Lemon & Lime Juice + 2 drops 20% Saline Solution

Building these is as easy as our previous cocktails, so just build them in separate shakers, add ice, shake, and double strain into chilled Nick & Noras. I think you know which one my favorite will be, but if you want to see how the other ones compare, check out the full episode below. I know the die-hard mixologists will say we’re just reinventing the Sweet & Sour Mix, but I honestly think the Super Cordial can help elevate your cocktail with speed, precision and consistency, without compromising on flavor.

With that said, it is kind of like an updated and upgraded Sweet & Sour Mix. So, now that we’ve reached the Bottom of the Glass we can talk about how you can elevate the Super Cordial even more: by clarifying it. I already showed how to do that for a cordial in the Gimlet episode, where I made a special “Rose & Smoke cordial”, which was then clarified with the use of agar agar. So check that out, and I’ll see you next time, Friends of Cocktails. Cheers!