There are generally many joyful culinary experiences. Some people are more into eating delicious foods and drinking delicious drinks than others, but most people have several things they really like. This post is about an approach for creating new drinks that I call “turning things into drinks”. This post is going to demonstrate the concept by presenting a recipe for a “peanut butter and jelly sour”. This drink is obviously inspired by a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I think it is fairly interesting to see how one can “translate” the flavors into liquid form.

Originally, I got the idea from this post about a peanut butter and jelly Old Fashioned on GastronomBlog. While I really liked the idea, I don’t drink Old Fashioneds that often. (I don’t dislike them, they are just not my favorites.) Hence, I thought about how one could adapt this approach to make a different cocktail. In order to stick with a classic, I chose the whisky sour to do so. Consequently, it is called the peanut butter and jelly sour.

The components – Peanut butter and jelly

There are two primary components that make up for the flavor of this drink. First of all, the peanut butter. How to get the peanut flavor into the cocktail? There are in fact commercially produced peanut butter whiskeys that might do the trick. As often, I try to avoid relying on “obscure ingredients” that people might not have that much use for or might not be able to find. However, somehow infusing the peanut flavor into the whisky sounds promising, so let’s make our own!

As peanut butter has a very high fat-content, it is perfectly suited for the technique of fat-washing (see the recipe for details). It gives a strong (trust me!) peanut flavor to the bourbon. Next is the jelly. To be completely honest, I do not particularly like jelly. Therefore, I decided to replace it by jam. As we are composing a sour here, we need some sort of sweetener. Of course this is a very obvious choice, but the jam will perfectly work as such. (Depending on the product you use, you might have to replace some of the jam by sugar syrup if its flavor is very intense.)

As a final touch we will add some Angostura bitters, a classic ingredient in whisky sours. On top of that, let’s a few drops of saline solution to bring all the flavors together and pay tribute to the savory flavor of the peanut butter!

A look at the flavor map

Finally, let’s check the flavor map. Despite the rather generous dose of lemon juice in this recipe, the PB&J sour turns out to be slightly on the sweet side. The salt is not noticeable as a distinct flavor component in the final drink. The nutty bourbon is the most prominent flavor component for sure. Interestingly, the nutty flavor increases even further as the ice begins to dilute the drink a bit further. Depending on personal preference, one can of course adjust the level of sweetness. If you are more into tart drinks, you may want to dial back the jam a bit. If you prefer slightly sweeter drinks, adding 10 ml of simple syrup might be to your liking.

The jam gives a fruity flavor to the drink. With the prominent peanut flavor and eggwhite silkiness, the PB&J sour is very decadent and luxurios. Hence, this drink is far from being refreshing and really quite heavy. I suppose one could make a lighter version by omitting the eggwhite.