Make yourself a Knickerbocker!
Posted on April 15, 2013
So I’ve been reading Imbibe! by David Wondrich and I came across a drink for which I had most of the ingredients and was much earlier historically than other drinks I’ve made. I’m a huge fan of the book, and all Wondrich’s Esquire columns. Previously I’ve consulted his recipes when looking for multiple sources on drinks and his recipes are nearly always the best.
One of the things that will surprise you when reading this book, is in the 1800’s many drink recipes called for fresh fruit and berries. Certainly fancy people who could afford good booze and wine drank a lot straight, but there was a lot of bowls of punch, and even the individual drinks often called for berries, oranges, and even pineapple syrup. Drier drinks like the martini are so much later in booze history. What’s great to know is that the culture has come back around to these early drinks enough since his book was written in 07 that you can find many of the things he says are impossible to get now in most liquor stores. If I think about how things have changed since he wrote the book, the place near me with a loud plastic awning under the BQE, has Bols Genever, Old Tom Gin, 20 kinds of rye, at least 4 or 5 absinthes and even creme de violette.
Anyway, a Knickerbocker, such a NY or at least Northeast name, and it’s a drink with nothing hard to find in it at all. Though it calls for Santa Cruz rum I had Scarlet Ibis, which is Trinidadian, but it is pot-still distilled. This is the old method of distilling which Wondrich does recommend for all kinds of these older drinks. This drink calls for raspberry syrup, and I’ve made a lot of my own syrups but in this case, I felt that we don’t get a lot of good raspberries in this area, they often have mold, and they are really expensive. A pint was $5.75 and I bought a syrup that I’ve used in the past for raspberry frosting that was $11, I really recommend D’arbo Raspberry syrup which I got at the health food store.
Here’s Wondrich’s recipe, which calls for shaved ice, which for the life of me I can’t figure out how to reproduce from cubes at home, so I just smashed some wrapped in paper towels with a mallet. Yes I know that’s crushed ice, but I don’t know how I would get it in shaved form.
1/2 a lime or lemon (I used lime)
2 teaspoons of raspberry syrup (D’arbo)
2 oz Rum (recipe calls for Santa Cruz, but I used Scarlet Ibis)
1 oz Curaçao (Cointreau is my go to, he recommends Grand Marnier which you certainly couldn’t go wrong with)
Shake with shaved ice and garnish with berries, serve with the spent lime rind, but do not shake with the lime rind.
I didn’t really have an authentic glass for this really, it calles for a 6-8oz tumbler. My Atlantic City jelly glasses make me happy and I like them for drinks which you don’t strain and leave the ice in, they are the right size if the wrong period and formality. I also added pineapple and cantaloupe to my garnish, alternately, it seems like you can be free with your fruit garnish in a lot of these drinks. I used my new cocktail picks to spear them. I like having the picks because they let me sample the garnish as I’m drinking my drink instead of fishing them out of the bottom or eating them at the beginning. My friend Snapper gave me the picks as a gift and I really appreciate them.
Anyway this drink is scrumptious, festive and so summery I’m going to be having it all season. Enjoy.
