Daiquiri

An American named Jennings Stockton Cox is widely acknowledged as having invented the daiquiri, naming it after the Cuban town where he concocted the first one in 1898. The man credited with introducing the drink to America was an American Navy Medical officer named Lucius W. Johnson, who got the recipe and took it back to Washington, D.C. and served it to the Army & Navy Club where today there a plaque honoring Johnson’s contribution at the club’s Daiquiri Lounge.

• 1 jigger West Indies rum
• Juice of ½ a lime
• 1 teaspoon powdered sugar

Preparation Shake with finely shaved ice and strain into cocktail glass.

Cultural context The bartender Constantino Ribalaigua Vert perfected the daiquiri at a Havana joint called El Floridita, later known as the Cathedral of the Daiquiri. Each evening, Ribalaigua appeared behind the bar dressed in a white shirt, a bow tie, a stylish vest, and an apron--"like an acrobat making his entrance onstage," as one historian put it. Among those who flocked to El Floridita were Gary Cooper, Tennessee Williams, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ernest Hemingway (the greatest Daiquiri fan of all time), who consumed them before, during, and after Prohbition.