Caribbean Cooler (Jamaican Cuisine, 1964)
In keeping with Retro Recipe challenge #5 (Boozy Holidays) I dived into one of my mother’s vintage Jamaican cookbooks for this post’s cocktail recipe,a rum punch simply titled “Caribbean Cooler”. I found the recipe in its original version to be a little too strong for my liking. I don’t know if this because of the cheap plastic bottle of rum that I used or if it is cos I am not really much of a lush. Either way, I found that after adding a 1/4 cup of brown sugar and ‘frequent sampling’ it was much more to my liking 😉 In fact, it was even better when I returned to it a few hours later.. hmmm… When I make this again I think I will use a simple syrup in place of the soda water.
Jamaican Cuisine was published by the Jamaican Information Service in 1964, two years after Independence, in an effort to forge and transmit a cohesive national identity. In it they write:
“Philosophers have always maintained that you can tell the character of a country by the way its people think. Others feel that the surest way to tell a country’s character is to examine the art it produces. Both are probably right, up to a point. But gourmets have alwasys insisted that the surest way to really know a country and its people is to study their eating habits – they food they eat, the way they cook it, and their attitude to foods and eating habits alien to them…. two years ago we reached a great and significant point in our chequered history. We gained our independence. Since then we have become conscious of being Jamaican, of being a people, with our own mores, our own way of thinking, our own identity. And since then we have determined to make the most of what we have, to promote our own culture and to make others conscious that we are an autonomous, integrated people with something good to offer to the world. And that brings us to the purpose of this presentation.”
Caribbean Cooler
Recipe:
2 measures rum
4 measures fresh pineapple juice (I used Guava-Pine juice)
1 heaping teaspoon powdered or castor sugar (I ended up using a 1/4 cup of brown sugar as well)
juice of 1/2 a lime
2 dashes of Angostura bitters
soda water
1. Put ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake well with ice
2. Fill tall glasses with cracked ice then pour the cocktail mixture halfway up in each glass
3. Top up the glasses with soda water
Stir and serve.
Serves 4