What does 'white' alone mean in cocktail recipes?

Question

I've come across the two following cocktail recipes:

East Meets West

Absolut Raspberry vodka, Cointreau, St-Germain elderflower liqueur, pomegranate juice, lime juice, white

The English Writer

Tanqueray gin, Aperol, pink grapefruit, acacia honey, lime juice, white

what does 'white' mean here? white rum? white wine? white liqueur (if there's such a thing)?

Answer 1

As mentioned in a couple of comments, this almost certainly means egg white, which is used in some shaken drinks to create a stable foam on top of the finished cocktail. It can also "round out" the flavor of a drink and prevent them from seeming overly sweet or tart. Neither of these is explicitly identified as a shaken cocktail, but that's the usual technique for drinks that include both sugar and citrus, as both of these do.

Some recipes use as much as an entire egg white, but much smaller quantities can be used if you crack and separate eggs before service, storing the whites chilled in a squeeze bottle, or mixed directly into a syrup you're making in bulk for one specific drink, a technique sometimes used to speed up service in high-volume bars. (For the "English Writer", you'd combine and keep chilled the non-alcoholic ingredients: grapefruit, lime, honey, and egg white. This allows your bartender to measure only 3 ingredients when making the drink rather than 6, which speeds the process and increases consistency.)

The abbreviation to simply "white" could mean any number of things: it could be they're using an egg substitute instead, or don't want to raise health concerns about the egg (which are minimal, but guests occasionally get squeamish) or the recipe simply got cut off (bartenders tend to list recipes from largest quantity to smallest). Without the exact context, it's difficult to say why the "egg" was left off here, but it wouldn't surprise me to see egg along with the other ingredients in both of these drink recipes. It's commonly used in cocktails and I can't imagine what else they might mean.

Answer 2

First - the recipe for East Meets West seems very off to me. I mean it's not recipe for East Meets West. Second - it's more close to Pomegranate Elderflower Vodka Drink.

• 1 1/2 vodka

• 1/2 elderflower liqueur such as St. Germain

• 1 pomegranate juice

• 1/2 fresh lime juice
• 1/4 simple syrup

AAAAAAnd because simple syrup is made from WHITE sugar I would say that this what they meant.

Also I've search for that second one because I've never heard of a drink with that name and only close in recipe was Gypsy Wedding.
Again - If the white means simple syrup this recipe is very strange because you already use honey (also all recipes call for honey syrup not honey in it's stale form).

for extra point I will point out that those recipes are very label oriented. Even Absolut on their drinks page don't mention other alcohols by name. Why Cointreau? Just triple-sec.

Answer 3

‘White’ in cocktail speak means with half n half, i.e. White Russian