Returning once again to our mantra that simple in the kitchen most often yields the best results, a friend and I had a conversation on Tuesday about iconic rum cocktails (in the context of a party he’s hosting this weekend).
One of the most simple rum based adult beverages, and truly worthy of the iconic label, is the real (read the original) daiquiri. We sampled several that evening, research that She Who Must Be Obeyed and I repeated yesterday, and even delved into the daiquiri’s history a bit.
Adult beverage historians often claim the drink originated in Cuba at the end of the 19th Century, though a bit of digging suggests that account misses the mark by more than 150 years.
It appears the British Navy under Admiral Vernon had started issuing grog rations of rum, sugar and lime as early as 1740, explaining in part the ferocious success of British trade and Naval operations back in those days.
Otherwise, most attribute the origin of the daiquiri to Jennings Cox, an American mine engineer and manager working near Daiquiri in post Spanish-American war Cuba, simply naming the favored drink of former Cuban rebels (rum, sugar, lime juice).
There are indeed other versions of the story (aren’t there always), including a military man by the name of General William Shafter who merely added ice to the mixture offered by Cuban rebels above and triumphantly brought it back to military salons of the era.
The beverage apparently made its first appearance in literature of the day in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s In This Side of Paradise (1920), though any fly fisher worth their salt will associate the Iconic Daiquiri with Papa Hemingway.
Hemingway wrote of the daiquiri –
The frapped part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.
‘Nuff said, though Hemingway by report favored his daiquiris with a slightly different blend and without sugar. A topic for next week…
1 freshly squeezed lime (3/4 ounce of juice)
1 tsp. sugar or 1/2 ounce simple syrup
2 ounces rum
Chill a martini or cocktail glass with ice.
Combine all ingredients in a shaker over ice and shake well; strain into the chilled glass.
Enjoy.
