The Corpse Reviver No. 2 is the only Corpse Reviver anyone still drinks. Four ingredients in equal parts — gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, lemon — shaken over a glass rinsed with absinthe. The cocktail and its warning both come from Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), the most influential bartending manual of the twentieth century.
Four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.
Harry Craddock, The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930)Craddock's Joke, Still Funny
Craddock was an American bartender who moved to London during Prohibition and ran the American Bar at the Savoy through the 1920s. His Savoy Cocktail Book collected the era's working repertoire under one cover — about 750 drinks. The Corpse Reviver family was a category, not a single drink: Number 1 (brandy, calvados, sweet vermouth) was the morning recovery option; Number 2 was the night-before-the-night-after version.
Number 1 has largely been forgotten. Number 2 — equal parts gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, lemon, with an absinthe rinse — is one of the most copied cocktails of the modern revival. Its symmetry makes it easy to remember, easy to scale, and unusually balanced for an equal-parts construction.
The Spec
Three-quarter ounces of each of the four core ingredients; one dash of absinthe in the glass, rinsed and discarded. Shake hard, double-strain. The absinthe is not a fifth ingredient — it's a perfume that touches the lip of the glass.
Lillet, Not Kina
Original Craddock used Kina Lillet — a quinine-fortified version of Lillet that stopped being made in 1986. Modern Lillet Blanc is lighter and less bitter. The drink still works; purists add a dash of orange bitters or substitute Cocchi Americano to recover some of the original quinine bite. Either path is defensible.
The Absinthe Rinse
Pour about a quarter ounce of absinthe into the chilled coupe, swirl to coat, and dump the rest. The leftover film is enough. If you pour the absinthe into the shaker tin instead, the drink reads as anise-forward — not what Craddock wrote.
Garnish
Either a brandied cherry or an orange peel. The Savoy printed neither; both are common in the modern revival.
Bottom Line
The Corpse Reviver No. 2 is one of the few equal-parts cocktails where every ingredient earns its place. Use a juniper-forward gin, fresh lemon, and a careful absinthe rinse, and the four parts knit into a single bright, slightly bitter, citrus-driven drink that lives up to its name better than the warning suggests.