Il Guero

This is a remarkably delicious drink! But I'm not convinced that the presence of egg white demands a dry shake. Has anyone else ignored that edict and simply shaken an egg-white drink in a conventional manner, all ingredients with the ice?

To Mixed up in Nashville:
The main benefit of having a separate step with and without ice is that when you don't have ice, the bubbles you create are both smaller and not immediately being deflated by ice, which results in a much more stable foam overall. Depending on your technique, the quality of your eggs, and the quality of your ice, a dry shake vs. a reverse dry shake may give you better results - there isn't a "one size fits all" winner between the two methods. But having a separate "wet shake" with ice and "dry shake" without *is* something I've tested against just doing it all with the wet shake, and it does matter. I have even worked in bars that will take one large rock and one small piece of ice (either a Hoshi pillow or a single KD cube) and add it to the egg white tin, and then shake with that, to try to thread the needle - you get a foam and the idea is that, because you only have two pieces of ice total, you still can chill and dilute, without breaking up the foam quite as much as if you shook with more ice. I'm skeptical of this trick - you have to shake longer for the proper dilution, so those seconds you gained, you largely lose again - and the resulting foam is lesser for the corners cut. Sometimes a little methylcellulose incorporated into a batched cocktail, combined with the egg white, makes up for this...but at that point you are solving for bad technique with a chemical stabilizer.