What to Use When You Are Out of Limes

Running out of limes does not end the evening. It changes which drink you are making, and the useful question is not "what do I pour instead" but "what does this substitution do to the recipe".

Bottled lime juice

Bottled juice is pasteurised, which is the whole story. Heating drives off the volatile oils that come from the peel, so what is left is acidity with almost no aroma behind it. In a long drink that is fine, because there is soda or juice supplying the smell. In a short one it is obvious.

Use it in a Cuba Libre, a Moscow Mule or anything else built in the glass over ice. Avoid it in a Daiquiri, where three ingredients means the lime is a third of what you are tasting, and the drink comes out flat and faintly metallic.

Lime cordial

Cordial is a different ingredient, not a substitute. It is sweetened and shelf-stable, so if you pour it in place of fresh juice you have to take the syrup back out of the recipe or the drink will be cloying.

There is one classic built on cordial rather than fruit, and it is worth making on purpose:

• 60 ml gin
• 15 ml lime cordial
• Stirred over ice, into a chilled coupe

That is a Gimlet in its original form, four to one. The Royal Navy drank it for scurvy and the ratio survived because it works. A Gimlet made with fresh lime and sugar is a good drink too, but it is a sour, and this is something else.

Lemon

Lemon swaps into most sours one for one. It is rounder and less floral than lime, a little less sharp, and in a Whiskey Sour or a Sidecar it is what the recipe wanted anyway.

Where it does not work is where the drink is named after the lime. A Margarita made with lemon is a perfectly nice drink that is not a Margarita, and the same is true of a Mojito. If you are serving it to someone who ordered by name, say what you did.

The other citrus

• Grapefruit is less acidic than lime, so you need more of it, and it brings a bitterness that suits tequila. This is most of why the Paloma works.
• Orange is much sweeter and much less acidic. It is not a substitute for lime in a sour; it is a different ingredient that happens to be citrus.
• Citric acid, if you happen to have it, dissolved at about a teaspoon to 100 ml of water, gives you the acidity with none of the flavour. Useful as a correction, not as an ingredient.

Or pour something that never wanted citrus

The simplest answer is often to make a different drink. A Negroni and an Old Fashioned are both stirred, both three ingredients, and neither one needs a lime. So does most of the spirit-forward category: no juice, nothing fresh, nothing that goes off.

That is worth knowing as a general principle. A home bar that can only make sours is a bar that stops working the moment the fruit bowl is empty, which is one of the arguments for keeping a bottle of vermouth and a bottle of bitters on the shelf.

What to do about it next time

Lime juice keeps about a day at its best and three at a push, and freezing it in an ice cube tray works better than it has any right to. Two cubes is roughly 30 ml, which covers most recipes. The aroma is diminished but it beats bottled by a wide margin.

Roll the fruit hard on the counter before cutting, and juice at room temperature. A cold lime gives up about a third less than a warm one, which is usually the difference between needing three and needing two.