Daiquirí No. 4, the Floridita’s Frozen Daiquiri with Maraschino, 1939
Reader ratingsGold rum, a teaspoon each of sugar and maraschino and half a lime, whizzed with snow-fine ice and served frappé: the Daiquirí No. 4 of Havana’s Bar La Florida, printed in 1939.
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink, about 4 fl oz
- Prep
- Total
Daiquirí No. 4, mounded snowy in a frosted coupe, beside half a lime.
The story behind the recipe
The Daiquirí No. 4 is the Floridita’s frozen daiquiri: two ounces of gold rum, a teaspoon each of sugar and maraschino and the juice of half a lime, “batido eléctricamente con hielo pulverizado,” whizzed electrically with powdered ice, and served frappé. Havana’s Bar La Florida printed it in 1939 in its bilingual booklet Floridita Cock-tails, as the fourth of five numbered daiquiris.
A milkshake mixer
The booklet reprints a 1937 United Press report by Jack Cuddy on the bar’s head bartender, Constantino Ribalaigua, known as Constante, and it gives the method. The ice “must be shaved so fine that it’s almost snow,” and it goes on “one of those malted milk stirrers in American Drug stores.” Constante wouldn’t use powdered sugar, which he said had starch in it. Cuddy also called the No. 4 one of Constante’s own inventions; that is the reporter’s claim, and we can’t say who blended a daiquiri first. The bar and its booklet are told in What Did Havana’s Cocktail King Pour in the 1930s?
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
A blender on short pulses stands in for the drugstore spindle, which Cuddy let run for about three minutes. Then, he wrote, strain it into chilled glasses “through a half-strainer—one that is not too fine,” so the drink comes out soft and snowy, finer than a modern slush. The rum-and-lime daiquiri it grew from, as first printed in 1913, is the Original Daiquiri.
DAIQUIRI No. 4
2 Onzas H. Club Carta Oro. / 1 Cucharadita de azúcar. / 1 Cucharadita Marrasquino. / El jugo de ½ limón verde. / Batido eléctricamente con hielo pulverizado. Sírvase frappe.
2 Ounces H. Club Carta Oro. / 1 Spoonful Marraschino. / Juice of ½ Lemon. / Shake with cracked ice. / Serve frappe.
Recipe makes: 1 drink, about 4 fl oz
Ingredients
For 1 drink, about 4 fl oz. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 1 drink, about 4 fl oz.
- Gold rum2 fl oz
- Superfine sugar1 tsp
- Maraschino liqueur1 tsp
- Fresh lime juice (about half a lime)1/2 fl oz
- Crushed ice1 cup
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 2 fl oz gold rum
- 1 tsp superfine sugar
- 1 tsp maraschino liqueur
- 1/2 fl oz fresh lime juice (about half a lime)
- 1 cup crushed ice
Equipment
Blender
Coarse strainer
Citrus juicer
Coupe, chilled
Instructions
Chill a coupe in the freezer.
Put the gold rum, superfine sugar, maraschino liqueur and fresh lime juice in a blender and stir until the sugar dissolves.
Add the crushed ice and blend in short pulses for about 20 seconds, until the ice is fine as snow and the drink is thick and pale.
Pour through a coarse strainer into the chilled coupe, letting it mound a little above the rim, and serve at once, with no garnish.
Nutrition
165calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 1 drink, about 4 fl oz
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for 80-proof rum, lime juice and sugar, and typical label values for maraschino liqueur, for one drink.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is one drink. Blend no more than two at a time, so the ice stays fine.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
The booklet’s English column drops the sugar and says “cracked ice”; the Spanish column and Cuddy’s report keep both the sugar and the electric mixer, so this recipe follows the Spanish. “Limón verde” is lime. Havana Club Carta Oro was a Cuban gold rum; any light gold rum works. Without a mixer, Cuddy’s advice was to shake it rapidly for about four minutes; a very hard shake with crushed ice for about 30 seconds, strained through a coarse strainer, comes close. With the melted ice, the drink is about 23% ABV.
Lime and crushed ice need no rum: the Lime Rickey of a 1912 druggists’ journal squeezes a whole lime over pineapple syrup and fills the glass with soda.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
Floridita Cock-tails (Havana: Bar La Florida, 1939), p. 28, “Daiquiri No. 4”; method from Jack Cuddy’s United Press report of March 2, 1937, reprinted on pp. 9–10
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Cocktails & Mixed Drinks
- Region
- Caribbean
- Source decade
- 1930s
- Base
- Rum
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Occasion
- Summer party
- Season
- Summer