Cuban Lime Daiquire

Cuban Daiquirí

Image: Flicker/Wiki/Aaron Gustafson

The name Daiquirí is also the name of a beach near Santiago, Cuba, and an iron mine in that area, and it is a word of Taíno origin. The Daiquirí was supposedly invented by an American mining engineer, named Jennings Cox, who happened to be in Cuba at the time of the Spanish-American War.

Originally the drink was served in a tall glass packed with cracked ice. A teaspoon of sugar was poured over the ice and the juice of one or two limes was squeezed over the sugar. Two or three ounces of white rum completed the mixture. The glass was then frosted by stirring with a long-handled spoon. Later the Daiquirí evolved to be mixed in a shaker with the same ingredients but with shaved ice. After a thorough shaking, it was poured into a chilled flute glass.

Consumption of the drink remained localized until 1909, when Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, a U.S. Navy medical officer, tried Cox's drink. Johnson subsequently introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., and drinkers of the Daiquirí increased over the space of a few decades. The Daiquirí was one of the favorite drinks of writer Ernest Hemingway and president John F. Kennedy.

The drink became popular in the 1940s. Wartime rationing made whiskey, vodka, etc., hard to come by, yet because of Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy (which opened up trade and travel relations with Latin America, Cuba and the Caribbean), rum was easily obtainable. The Good Neighbor Policy (also known as 'The Pan-American program'), helped make Latin America seem fashionable. Consequently, rum-based drinks (once frowned upon as being the domain of sailors and down-and-outs), also became fashionable, and the Daiquirí saw a tremendous rise in popularity in the US.

The basic recipe for a Daiquirí is also similar to the grog British sailors drank aboard ship from the 1740s onwards. By 1795 the Royal Navy daily grog ration contained rum, water, 3/4 ounce of lemon or lime juice, and 2 ounces of sugar. This was a common drink across the Caribbean, and as soon as ice became available this was included instead of the water.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz light rum
• 3/4 oz lime juice
• 1/4 oz sugar syrup

Preparation:

• Pour the light rum, lime juice and sugar syrup into a cocktail shaker with ice cubes.
• Shake well.
• Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

I like to crush the ice because it gives the drink a wonderful smoothie texture!