This being ‘the Mardi Gras weekend’ in NOLA – the weekend before Fat Tuesday on March 4th – for today’s Thirsty Thursday we offer the humble Hurricane cocktail, oft maligned though worthy of a thoughtful look back in time before the Hurricane morphed into the overly sweet tourist beverage first time NOLA visitors clamor for.
Cocktail historians agree that the Hurricane was born of the entrepreneurial genius of bar owners Benson “Pat” O’Brien and Charlie Cantrell, of the legendary Pat O’Brien’s Bar in the French Quarter. The public bar (previously a passworded speakeasy) opened its doors 3 December, 1933, actually two days before the end of prohibition. (A much more detailed and colorful history of the bar was scribed here in a 2008 Times Picayune article.)
According to the stories, the proprietors were forced by wholesalers to order vast quantities of rum along with the various other spirits they needed given the serious glut of rum held post prohibition. No large rum order, no deal at all.
So the intrepid bartenders once again proved that necessity was the mother of invention and created a potent mixture of rum, fresh lemon juice and passion fruit syrup, poured it into a glass shaped like a hurricane lamp and a legend was born.
Many would (and have) suggest(ed) that the current version of the Hurricane served at Pat O’Brien’s today is an cloyingly sweet shadow of the original, made with a|an (in)famous powder mixer base and a healthy pour of rum (Pat O’Brien’s supposedly remains the single largest rum purveyor in the world).
After several calls to superstar rum masters and a bit of digging, it appears this recipe is as close to the original as you can find these days. And it sounds like it’s worth making your own passion fruit syrup if you can find passion fruit pulp frozen….
2 ounces dark rum
1 ounce passion fruit syrup (Aunty Lilikoi is the one to look for)
1 ounce fresh lemon juice OR lime juice
Orange Slice
Cherry
Crushed ice
Combine the rum, passion fruit syrup and juice with ice in your trusty shaker and shake like you mean it ‘until the shaker is damned frosty’ as Ed likes to say. Serve in a hurricane or tiki glass over crushed ice and garnish with the fresh fruit.
Enjoy.
