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Clover Club cocktail

gin cocktail

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ3681226 ↗
Source-derived summary

A Clover Club cocktail is a shaken cocktail consisting of gin, lemon juice, raspberry syrup, and egg white. The egg white acts as an emulsifier, forming the drink's characteristic foamy head.

History and character

The Clover Club cocktail is a drink that pre-dates Prohibition in the United States, and is named for the Philadelphia men's club of the same name, which met in the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel at South Broad and Walnut Streets in Center City. The Clover Club was chartered in 1882.

Of the cocktail, Robert Hess claims "It has a long history [...] and was enjoyed by the captains of industry who were members of the famous club."

Published recipes for the cocktails, nearly identical to the modern "Clover Club cocktail" appear as early as 1908. and J. A. Grohusko's Jack's Manual features a drink called "A Clover Leaf." Grohusko writes that it "is said to be popular in the city of brotherly love. Certainly it is decorative for it has a soft orchid color, with a rim of white." The recipe itself features sugar, Gordon's Gin, raspberry syrup, egg white and a sprig of mint. Cocktail books such as Applegreen's Bar Book, which published several editions and mentioned the Clover Club bar in its 1904 edition, did not include the "Clover Leaf Cocktail" until 1909.

Lifestyle and art sections of newspapers of the era included briefs about the cocktail describing it as "now new."

Its earliest published appearance in a cocktail book as "The Clover Club Cocktail" was in 1910 in Raymond E. Sullivan's The Barkeeper's Manual. His recipe included a mint sprig as garnish.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Clover Club cocktail” is gin cocktail. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Clover, Club and cocktail, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1882, 1908, 1904, 1909—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Clover, Club and cocktail is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “gin cocktail” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3681226. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1882, 1908, 1904 and 1909.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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  2. Expand the search: follow Clover Club cocktail primary sources, Clover Club cocktail archive and Clover research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Clover Club cocktail” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.