St Clement's Drink: Orange Juice and Bitter Lemon, With or Without Alcohol

Orange juice and bitter lemon, poured over ice in roughly equal measure, make a St Clement’s. The drink has sat on British pub soft-drink lists for so long that few people who order it stop to ask about the name, which comes from the nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons.” Its first line, “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s,” ties the two fruits to a London church, so the drink works as a small pun: oranges and lemons in a glass are, by the logic of the rhyme, St Clement’s. Two churches, St Clement Danes on the Strand and St Clement Eastcheap in the City, have each been put forward as the one in the verse. Nobody has settled it.

What goes in the glass

The entry in our database, listed as St. Clements, calls for bitter lemon and orange juice and nothing else, and a near-identical recipe spelled Saint Clemence does the same. Neither gives proportions. That is a fair reflection of how the drink is served, since a pub fills a highball with ice, pours orange juice to about halfway and tops it from a small bottle of bitter lemon, usually around 4 oz of each.

The proportion matters more than the drink’s casual reputation would suggest, because the two ingredients pull in opposite directions. Orange juice carries most of the sugar and nearly all of the body. Bitter lemon brings carbonation, a sharper citrus note and the dry bitterness of quinine, so a glass weighted toward the juice drinks like flat orangeade, whereas one weighted toward the soda turns thin and faintly medicinal. Equal parts is the standard starting point. Anyone who finds that too sweet can move to two parts bitter lemon to one of juice, which keeps the color while tightening the finish. Freshly squeezed orange, being tarter than most juice from a carton, needs slightly less bitter lemon to reach the same balance.

What bitter lemon actually is

Bitter lemon follows the same principle as tonic water, sweetened carbonated water with quinine for bitterness, except that lemon juice and often lemon pulp or peel extract are added. Those solids are why it pours cloudy. The quinine supplies a dry, lingering edge, while the lemon gives a heavier, almost juicy texture that tonic lacks, so the taste lands between a lemonade and a tonic: sweeter than expected on the first sip, drier by the end of it. In the United States, the FDA caps quinine in carbonated drinks at 83 parts per million, a limit that applies to tonic and bitter lemon alike. The bitterness is distinct but never harsh.

Schweppes is the brand most closely associated with it. Several recipes in the database name it outright, a useful hint that those drinks were written with that particular bottle in mind.

Finding a substitute in the US

Although bitter lemon is a supermarket staple in Britain and much of Europe, it is harder to find on American shelves, where it tends to appear, if at all, in import aisles or from online sellers. The closest substitute copies its construction. About ½ oz of fresh lemon juice squeezed into 4 oz of tonic water supplies the quinine and the lemon in one step, giving a glass that is clearer, and a little less sweet, than the bottled version.

Italian sparkling lemon sodas such as San Pellegrino Limonata take a different route, since they bring the cloudy lemon body without any quinine. The drink loses its bitter backbone and tastes more like a sparkling orange lemonade. A dash of Angostura puts back some of the dryness, although it also adds a trace of alcohol, which matters to anyone keeping the glass strictly alcohol-free. Sprite or 7Up will make something perfectly drinkable, close to the version some pubs pour with clear British-style lemonade. It is the sweetest option, and the furthest from the original.

The soft version and its relatives

The St Clement’s has lasted as a non-alcoholic order because it tastes like something an adult chose, as opposed to a juice handed over for lack of alternatives, and the bitterness is what earns it that standing. The database holds a few soft relatives built on the same idea. Bitter Experience adds lime juice to the orange and bitter lemon, which pulls the drink toward sour. Mandate swaps the orange for mandarin juice and adds raspberry syrup, giving a pinker, sweeter glass that children tend to prefer.

Alcoholic versions

Orange and lemon accept almost any spirit, so the drink spikes easily. A search of the forty-odd bitter-lemon recipes on Cocktail Builder turns up several highballs that amount to boozy versions of it.

With vodka, the closest match is Johnny on the Beach: vodka, orange juice and bitter lemon over ice, with an orange slice. It is, in effect, a St Clement’s with a shot in it, and a reasonable build is 1½ oz vodka, 3 oz orange juice and 3 oz bitter lemon. Leave out the juice and the drink becomes the Vodka Bitter Lemon, or its brand-named twin, Vodka and Schweppes, both drier and closer to a vodka tonic. Salt Lick replaces the orange with grapefruit juice, which keeps the structure but makes the glass noticeably more bitter.

Gin’s botanicals sit comfortably against quinine, as any gin and tonic drinker already knows. The Citrus Gin Cooler layers gin and Cointreau beneath bitter lemon, sparkling lemon and sparkling water, so the orange arrives through the liqueur instead of the juice; of the group, it is the most polished. UFO is simply genever and bitter lemon, maltier and rounder than a London dry gin would make it.

Orange liqueur is the third route, and it gets closest to the St Clement’s flavor with no juice at all. Chandos Club pairs cognac with Grand Marnier under bitter lemon, producing a brandied, marmalade-like highball. The Seville Highball combines Mandarine Napoléon with Pernod, so that anise runs underneath the citrus. For an aperitif, Campari and Bitter Lemon needs only two bottles, and because Campari already leans on bitter orange, it tastes like a red, grown-up cousin of the original.

A bottle of Cointreau opened for the cooler has plenty of other uses, which our Cointreau cocktails roundup collects. The tonic-and-lemon substitute also opens up most of the drinks in our guide to drinks with tonic water, and juice-led ideas continue in cocktails with orange juice.

Serving it

Both liquids should be cold before they meet, because warm soda loses much of its carbonation the moment it hits ice. The bitter lemon goes in last, poured gently down the side of the glass so that its bubbles rise through the juice. One lift with a bar spoon is enough. A tall, narrow glass holds carbonation longer than a wide tumbler, and pubs usually garnish with an orange slice, sometimes with a lemon wheel beside it. For a crowd, a jug of chilled juice with bottles of bitter lemon opened at the table keeps each glass livelier than a premixed pitcher would.

Last modified on November 8, 2026