Gum Syrup
Simple syrup with gum arabic dissolved in it. Pre-Prohibition cocktail recipes are written assuming this is what is on the bar, not the plain sugar-water that replaced it. The texture is the difference, and the texture matters.
What it is
Gum syrup, also written gomme syrup from the French gomme, is sugar syrup with gum arabic dissolved into it. Gum arabic is the dried sap of the Acacia senegal tree, harvested mostly in Sudan, Chad, and Senegal. It has been used as a food additive and pharmaceutical binder for thousands of years. In a sugar syrup, it acts as an emulsifier and a body-modifier, turning a thin sweet liquid into something silky, almost lightly viscous, that coats the tongue.
A typical gum syrup runs two parts sugar to one part water by weight, with about 20 to 25 grams of gum arabic per liter of finished syrup. Some recipes use less, some more. The ratio matters less than the act of including gum arabic at all.
Where it shows up
Almost everywhere in the pre-Prohibition canon. Jerry Thomas's 1862 How to Mix Drinks calls for gum syrup explicitly in dozens of recipes and tacitly assumes it for many more. Harry Johnson's 1882 Bartenders' Manual. Hugo Ensslin in 1917. The expectation through the late nineteenth century was that the bar's house sugar syrup was a gum syrup. Plain simple syrup was for kitchens, not for bars.
Specific drinks where the gum is doing real work: any sour-style cocktail where the body of the drink matters, especially gin and brandy sours. The Improved Whiskey Cocktail in Jerry Thomas. Mint Juleps, where the gum coats the ice and ties the mint into the drink. Any Champagne-based cocktail where you want the bubbles to stand up against a sweetener.
The historical arc
Gum arabic in sugar syrup is medieval. It shows up in apothecary preparations across Europe and the Middle East from the early modern period onward. By the 1700s gomme syrup was a recognized French confectionery and bar product. When American bartending was professionalized in the mid-1800s by Jerry Thomas and his peers, gum syrup came with them as the standard sweetening base. Thomas's recipes are written for gum, not simple.
The decline came on three fronts. First, gum arabic from West Africa got expensive and harder to source through the world wars, when sub-Saharan supply chains were disrupted. Second, after Prohibition, the cocktails that came back were simpler and less attentive to texture, and bars started defaulting to plain simple syrup or, worse, granulated sugar dissolved into the drink. Third, mass-market bar guides from the 1940s through the 1980s simply stopped mentioning gum syrup. By 1970 it was a museum ingredient.
The revival is mostly post-2008. Small Hand Foods released a commercial gomme syrup, and bartenders started making house gum syrups again. PUNCH magazine and Wondrich both wrote pieces explaining why a Tom Collins made with gum syrup is structurally different from one made with simple. By 2015 gum syrup was on most cocktail bar back bars in major US cities.
How to make it
The hard part is dispersing the gum arabic. Powdered gum arabic clumps if you dump it into hot syrup directly, so the standard method is to make a slurry first.
- Combine 25g powdered gum arabic with 100ml hot water and whisk until smooth. Let sit for an hour.
- Make a 2:1 simple syrup with 600g sugar and 300ml water. Heat gently until clear.
- Whisk the gum slurry into the warm syrup. Strain through a fine sieve.
- Bottle and refrigerate. Keeps about a month.
Some recipes call for cooking the gum into the syrup directly, which works but produces a darker, slightly cooked-sugar flavor. Cold-method versions exist using a Vitamix and patience.
Why texture matters more than flavor here
Most cocktail ingredient discussions focus on aroma and taste. Gum syrup is the rare ingredient where the contribution is mostly textural. Gum arabic does not taste like much, and a finished gum syrup does not taste especially different from simple syrup. What it does is change the way the drink coats the inside of the mouth, the way the sweetness releases over time on the palate, and the way the drink stands up against ice melt. A Whiskey Sour with simple syrup feels thin in the mouth at minute three. The same drink with gum syrup still feels structured at minute three. The difference is small in any one sip and large across the lifespan of the drink.
The other thing gum arabic does is help emulsify the egg-white foam in a cocktail like the Whiskey Sour or the Pisco Sour. The foam holds longer and stands taller. This is one of the reasons pre-Prohibition recipes that call for both egg white and gum syrup tend to look photographically better than their modern descendants made with simple.
Modern brands
- Small Hand Foods Gum Syrup (San Francisco). The commercial standard. Real gum arabic, made in small batches, ships nationwide.
- BG Reynolds Gum Syrup. Tiki specialist's house version. Slightly different ratio.
- Liber & Co. Gomme Syrup. Texas. Good body, slightly sweeter.
Modern substitutions
The closest substitute is plain simple syrup with a small amount of egg white frothed in for body, but this only works in shaken drinks and changes the structure. A 2:1 simple syrup with no gum is the easiest sub and works for most uses, with the understanding that you lose the silky mouthfeel. For drinks where the texture is the point, like a Whiskey Smash or a Tom Collins, you will miss the gum.
Some bartenders use a touch of glycerin in simple syrup as a stand-in for the body effect. It works mechanically but tastes slightly different. Real gum syrup is not hard to make once you have the powdered gum, which is available from baking suppliers and online.
Where to buy
Small Hand Foods ships from their own site. Cocktail Kingdom carries it. Powdered gum arabic for home use is available from King Arthur Baking, Modernist Pantry, and Amazon for around fifteen dollars per pound, which makes a lot of syrup.
At a glance
| Category | Sweetener with body modifier |
|---|---|
| Origin | Medieval Mediterranean apothecary, then bar |
| Active ingredient | Gum arabic from Acacia senegal |
| ABV | 0% (some bottled versions add a small amount of alcohol as preservative) |
| Standard ratio | 2:1 sugar to water with 25g gum per liter |
| Used in | Most pre-Prohibition recipes that call for "syrup" |
Cocktails to try
- Whiskey Smash · whiskey, mint, gum syrup, lemon, crushed ice.
- Tom Collins · Old Tom gin, lemon, gum syrup, soda. The body matters.
- Improved Whiskey Cocktail · whiskey, gum syrup, Maraschino, absinthe, bitters. Jerry Thomas, 1876 edition.
The texture difference between simple syrup and gum syrup is small in any one drink and enormous across the night. The pre-Prohibition bar knew this.
The Lost Cocktail Codex transcribes the original syrup specs from the source manuscripts. When Thomas writes "syrup" he means gum, and the Codex says so. Drop your email below.