Caipirinha

the national drink of Brazil: a whole lime cut into wedges and crushed skin and all with sugar so the peel oil goes into the glass, filled with crushed ice and cachaça and stirred

Origin: Brazil

From the journey of Lime.

The caipirinha began, by the usual account, as a country remedy rather than a pleasure. In the sugar-growing interior of São Paulo state during the influenza pandemic of 1918 the sick were dosed with lime, garlic, and honey in cachaça, the raw sugarcane spirit distilled on every plantation; the garlic and the honey were dropped, the sugar and the ice were added, and what remained became the drink of the whole country. Its name comes from caipira, the word for a countryman or rustic, and it has never entirely lost that character: it is a plain, strong, cheap drink of three things, and its whole art lies in one technical decision. The lime is not juiced. It is cut into wedges and crushed in the glass together with the sugar, so that the sugar crystals abrade the peel and release the aromatic oil of the rind along with the juice, and the finished drink therefore carries a bitterness and a perfume that no squeezed lime can supply. Brazilian Portuguese settles the botanical question in the lime's favour, for limão in Brazil means the small green lime and a lemon must be specified as a limão siciliano; the fruit used is the limão taiti, the seedless Persian lime, of which Brazil is one of the world's great growers.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole lime, unwaxed, at room temperature
  • 2 tsp caster or demerara sugar
  • 60 ml cachaça
  • 1 handful crushed ice

Method

  1. Wash and dry the lime, cut off and discard the two ends, then quarter it lengthways and cut out the white pithy core running down each wedge. Cut each quarter across into two or three pieces.
  2. Put the lime pieces skin side down in a sturdy old-fashioned glass, add the sugar, and press firmly with a muddler, twisting as you go, for about 15 seconds. Do not pulverise.
  3. Fill the glass to the brim with crushed ice.
  4. Pour over the cachaça and stir well from the bottom up with a long spoon, lifting the crushed lime through the ice, for about 10 seconds.
  5. Top with a little more crushed ice if the level has dropped, and serve at once with a short straw or a spoon, leaving the lime pieces in the glass.

Notes

Cachaça is distilled from fresh pressed sugarcane juice rather than from molasses, which is what distinguishes it from rum and gives it its grassy, faintly funky character; an unaged white cachaça is correct here, since aged and wood-rested bottlings are better drunk neat. The same drink made with vodka is a caipiroska and with sake a caipisake, both common in Brazil and both perfectly respectable. The sugar should be adjusted to the limes, which vary considerably: taste after muddling and add more if the fruit is very sharp. Passion fruit, tangerine, pineapple, and cashew fruit caipirinhas are made throughout Brazil, though in every case a squeeze of lime is retained for balance. The drink was given legal protection by Brazilian decree in 2003, which fixes its ingredients as cachaça, lime, and sugar and nothing else.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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