Papa Doble

the Floridita daiquiri built for a diabetic drinker: double rum, no sugar at all, grapefruit juice and maraschino standing in for the missing sweetness, blitzed with crushed ice

Origin: Havana, Cuba

From the journey of Grapefruit.

Constantino Ribalaigua Vert ran the bar at El Floridita in Havana from 1918 and built there a family of frozen daiquiris of considerable precision, numbered rather than named. Ernest Hemingway drank at the Floridita through the 1930s and after, and the version made for him took double the rum, no sugar whatsoever, and grapefruit juice and maraschino in its place. It is still sold as the Papa Doble, and in a slightly sweetened form as the Hemingway daiquiri or Daiquirí No. 4. The drink is an argument about sugar. A daiquiri is rum, lime, and sugar in balance, and removing the sugar should leave something undrinkably austere. What holds it together instead is the grapefruit, which contributes a small amount of natural sweetness but, more importantly, replaces the structural role sugar was playing. Sugar in a sour rounds the edges and gives the drink body; grapefruit's bitterness does something different but comparable, giving the palate something to hold onto other than acid. The maraschino then adds perfume without much sweetness, being a dry cherry-stone liqueur rather than a syrup. Hemingway's own version, described in his fiction, ran to double rum and no sugar, and by most accounts he drank a good many at a sitting. Made to that specification it is a demanding drink. The version below is the bar's, which is the one worth making.

Ingredients

60 ml white rum, Cuban style, light and dry
30 ml grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed and strained
20 ml lime juice, freshly squeezed
15 ml maraschino liqueur
150 g crushed ice
1 wedge lime, to garnish

Method

Chill a coupe thoroughly in the freezer for at least fifteen minutes.
Put the rum, both juices, maraschino, and crushed ice into a blender.
Blend on high for 8 to 10 seconds only, until the texture is that of soft snow with no shards remaining.
Pour into the chilled coupe without pressing or packing it down, and serve at once with a lime wedge.

Notes

Maraschino means the clear, dry, cherry-stone liqueur of Luxardo or Maraska, not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries, which is an entirely different product and will ruin the drink. Use a light dry Cuban-style rum; a heavy dark or spiced rum overwhelms the grapefruit. The drink is genuinely sugarless and will taste severe to anyone expecting a standard daiquiri, and adding 10 ml of simple syrup gives the Daiquirí No. 4, which is what most bars now serve as the Hemingway. White grapefruit is more authentic to the period; ruby makes it noticeably easier to drink. It may be shaken and strained over ice rather than blended, which is less traditional here but perfectly good.

The Gastrographer

Name: Papa Doble
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 1
Cuisine: Cuba
Ingredients: 60 ml white rum, Cuban style, light and dry; 30 ml grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed and strained; 20 ml lime juice, freshly squeezed; 15 ml maraschino liqueur; 150 g crushed ice; 1 wedge lime, to garnish

Mapping Culinary History

To explore — select an ingredient below.

To explore — select an ingredient below · click any location dot on the map for recipes and stories · browse the information panel on the right · trace the full journey on the timeline.

Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control