This delicious winter pear cocktail is bursting with seasonal ripe, fresh pear and a lovely, sweet almond flavour. The vodka-based cocktail is shaken with egg white to give it a silky mouthfeel and delightful froth. A sprinkle of cloves ties in spice of the winter holiday season.

A winter pear cocktail in a glass decorated with flowers.

Decorating this glass was so simple. I simply bundled baby's breath flowers around the stem of crystal glassware and tied it up with some twine. I think these would look beautiful served at a wedding.

Keeping with the season, the blood orange negroni, Frangelico amaretto martini, and apple whisky sour are a couple other winter cocktail favourites of mine.

An overhead image of ground cloves sprinkled on a winter pear cocktail.

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Ingredients
Instructions
Variations
Equipment
📖 Recipe

Ingredients

Bosc pear - Despite their rough-looking exterior, the flesh of Bosc pear has a delicate and spicy-sweet flavour.
Freshly squeezed lemon juice
Vodka - This is the base liquor of this cocktail.
Disaronno amaretto - An Italian almond-flavoured liqueur.
Almond orgeat syrup - A cloudy, sweet syrup with a strong almond flavour. It is made with almonds, sugar, and either rose water or orange blossom water.
Pasteurized egg whites
Ground cloves

See the recipe card below for quantities.

Instructions

Peel the pear, and chop it into small pieces (cutting out and disposing of the seeded core). Put the pear into a small bowl and toss with a small splash of lemon juice to slow them from browning.

Then use a muddler to mash the pear into a thick purée.

Next you're going to pour the pear purée into a cheesecloth and wring the juice out into a small bowl. Make sure to get all of it. The cheesecloth will keep out the thick pulp.

A hand squeezing fresh pear juice from purée in cheesecloth.

Because this cocktail contains egg white, we are going use a technique called dry shaking (without ice) followed by regular shaking (with ice).

Add the pear juice, vodka, amaretto, orgeat syrup, and egg white into your cocktail shaker. Dry shake it (without ice) for 30 seconds. This will activate the egg proteins to give it that beautiful smooth texture and froth.

Add a few ice cubes and shake the cocktail for another 20 seconds to chill and dilute the drink.

Pour the cocktail through a small sieve into a glass. This is an important step because the sieve will catch any potentially remaining egg white strings that are trying to sneak into your drink.

Sprinkle with a little dusting of cloves (which conveniently masks any scent of egg) and voilà - your winter pear cocktail is ready to be served.

Variations

The almond flavour in this cocktail can be replaced with hazelnut. Substitute the orgeat with simple syrup and the amaretto with Frangelico hazelnut liqueur.

Equipment

This cocktail bar set contains the muddler, cocktail sieve, and cocktail shaker that you will need to make this pear cocktail. You will also need cheesecloth to wring the juice out of the pear.

cocktail bar set

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cheesecloth

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A winter pear cocktail on a table in front of a Christmas tree.

📖 Recipe