Daiquiri

This article is about the mixed drink. For the Cuban village, see Daiquirí.

Daiquirí

IBA Official Cocktail
Daiquirí garnished with lime
Type	Cocktail
Primary alcohol by volume	Rum
Served	Straight up; without ice
Standard garnish	Half a lime slice
Standard drinkware	Cocktail glass
IBA specified ingredients*	45ml (9 parts) White rum 20ml (4 parts) lime juice 5ml (1 part) Simple syrup
Preparation	Pour all ingredients into shaker with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain in chilled cocktail glass.

Daiquiri (pron.: /ˈdækəriː/; Spanish: daiquirí [dajkiˈɾi]) is a family of cocktails whose main ingredients are rum, citrus (typically lime juice), and sugar or other sweetener.

The Daiquirí is one of six basic drinks listed in David A. Embury's classic The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. In the book, he also suggests some variations.

Origins

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.^{[citation needed]} 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, ¾ 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.

Variations

• Daiquirí Floridita – with maraschino liqueur, created by Constantino Ribalaigua Vert at El Floridita.^{[citation needed]}
• Hemingway Daiquirí – or Papa Doble – two and a half jiggers of white rum, juice of two limes and half a grapefruit, six drops of maraschino liqueur, without sugar, served frozen.
• Banana Daiquiri – regular Daiquirí with a half a banana.
• Strawberry Daiquirí – regular with strawberry added.

Frozen Daiquirí

A wide variety of alcoholic mixed drinks made with finely pulverized ice are often called frozen Daiquirí. These drinks can also be combined and poured from a blender eliminating the need for manual pulverization. Such drinks are often commercially made in machines which produce a texture similar to a smoothie, and come in a wide variety of flavors made with various alcohol or liquors. Another way to create a frozen Daiquirí (mostly fruit-flavored variants) is by using frozen limeade, providing the required texture, sweetness and sourness all at once.
Variations on the frozen Daiquirí.

• The Old Rose Daiquirí, which features strawberry syrup and rum along with two teaspoons of sugar and lime juice.
• The Daiquirí Mulata featuring rum and coffee liqueur.

See also

• List of cocktails
• Caipirinha – similar Brazilian cocktail
• Mojito – other popular and similar rum cocktail, adding mint and soda
• Ti'Punch – similar French Caribbean cocktail
• Gimlet – similar cocktail using gin or vodka instead of rum

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Daiquirí Story

External links

• Digital Images regarding Jennings Cox including an original Daiquirí recipe from the Carmen Puig Collection held by the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries