Does it actually cure a hangover?

No, and anybody selling you that is selling you a second drink. What it does is reintroduce alcohol to a system in revolt, which postpones the reckoning rather than canceling it. The genius of the recipe is psychological. It's bright, sour, and faintly medicinal from the absinthe, so it feels restorative even as it digs the hole deeper. Treat the resurrection angle as folklore and enjoy the drink on its own considerable merits.

What can I use instead of Lillet Blanc?

Cocchi Americano is the popular substitute and arguably the more interesting one, slightly more bitter and quinine-forward, closer to the Kina Lillet that existed when this drink was written. Modern Lillet is sweeter and tamer than its ancestor. Either works. What doesn't work is dry vermouth, which goes too austere, or anything that's been open in your fridge for a season, because aromatized wine oxidizes and turns flat and sad.

Why such a tiny amount of absinthe?

Because anise is a bully. Give it room and it flattens everything around it into a single black-licorice note. One dash, or a rinsed-and-dumped glass, lets it work as perfume rather than flavor, lingering at the edges and making the whole thing smell more complicated than its four parts have any right to. Restraint is the entire technique. Pour with a heavy hand and you've made a different, worse drink.

The Corpse Reviver #2: A Hangover Cure That Lies to Your Face

Four ingredients in equal measure, lined up like a firing squad, and somehow they don't shoot each other. The Corpse Reviver #2 was sold as a morning-after cure, which is a beautiful lie, because nothing this clean and pale should be allowed near a person at 8 a.m. It is dangerously easy to drink. That is the whole problem and the whole point.

0.75 ozGin

0.75 ozCointreau

0.75 ozLillet Blanc

0.75 ozLemon Juice

1 dashAbsinthe

Garnish: Orange peel

Equal parts is the gag here. Gin, Cointreau, Lillet Blanc, and lemon juice, three-quarters of an ounce apiece, which on paper reads like a drink with no opinion. It has plenty. You shake it hard with good ice, because there is citrus in it and citrus demands aeration, that frothy lift you cannot get by stirring. The absinthe is the move that separates the people who care from the people reading off a card. One dash, or better, rinse the chilled coupe and dump the excess, so the anise haunts the glass instead of bullying the drink. Strain clean. The orange peel goes over the top, expressed for oils, then in or discarded, your call. Use a Lillet that hasn't been open since the last administration. It's wine. It dies.

This is a Sidecar wearing a gin suit. The Sidecar family is built on a complete sour, spirit plus citrus plus sweet, where the sweet element is carried by a structural liqueur instead of plain sugar syrup. That liqueur does double duty, sweetening and flavoring at once, and the rule of thumb is that it sits at half an ounce to an ounce and never overpowers the base. Here Cointreau is that load-bearing wall. It sweetens the lemon and threads orange through everything, which is exactly why a daisy works. Swap the brandy of a classic Sidecar for gin, fold in Lillet as a softening agent, and ghost it with absinthe, and you've got the same skeleton dressed for a different funeral. You can see the whole bloodline from here. The Cable Car, the Brandy Crusta, the Between the Sheets, even the Aviation if you squint, all of them lean on a liqueur to do the structural work a humble sugar cube does elsewhere. Understand the Cointreau's job and you understand the family.

The name comes from a category, not a single drink. Corpse Revivers were the boozy genre of morning pick-me-ups, hair of the dog with delusions of grandeur, and there were several numbered entries. The #1 was brandy-forward and frankly grim. The #2 is the one that survived, codified by Harry Craddock in the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, where he attached a warning that four taken in quick succession will unrevive the corpse. He wasn't joking, and he wasn't entirely serious either, which is the correct posture toward this drink. It pretty much vanished for decades, the absinthe ban didn't help, and then the craft revival dragged it back into the light because bartenders love a balanced equal-parts formula they can recite drunk. What they sometimes forget is that balance isn't the same as harmless. This thing drinks like lemonade with ambition. The Lillet rounds the edges, the Cointreau makes it taste almost innocent, and the gin and absinthe are doing the real work in the background, quietly. Order one. Then think hard before you order the second.

Open the Corpse Reviver #2 recipe card on Speed Pour

FAQ

Does it actually cure a hangover?: No, and anybody selling you that is selling you a second drink. What it does is reintroduce alcohol to a system in revolt, which postpones the reckoning rather than canceling it. The genius of the recipe is psychological. It's bright, sour, and faintly medicinal from the absinthe, so it feels restorative even as it digs the hole deeper. Treat the resurrection angle as folklore and enjoy the drink on its own considerable merits.
What can I use instead of Lillet Blanc?: Cocchi Americano is the popular substitute and arguably the more interesting one, slightly more bitter and quinine-forward, closer to the Kina Lillet that existed when this drink was written. Modern Lillet is sweeter and tamer than its ancestor. Either works. What doesn't work is dry vermouth, which goes too austere, or anything that's been open in your fridge for a season, because aromatized wine oxidizes and turns flat and sad.
Why such a tiny amount of absinthe?: Because anise is a bully. Give it room and it flattens everything around it into a single black-licorice note. One dash, or a rinsed-and-dumped glass, lets it work as perfume rather than flavor, lingering at the edges and making the whole thing smell more complicated than its four parts have any right to. Restraint is the entire technique. Pour with a heavy hand and you've made a different, worse drink.