Cardamom Daiquiri
Muddle; Shake ∙ 4 min ∙ 19.1% ABV ∙
The Cardamom Daiquiri shakes white rum, fresh lime and sugar with muddled green cardamom pods — a spiced twist on the classic Daiquiri. Muddled cardamom pushes a warm, resinous spice through the tart lime and rum, finishing crisp and dry rather than sweet — a bright pick for after dinner.
Ingredients
1
Servings
Garnish
Instructions for 1 serving
- Pre-chill a glass
- Cut zest from your lime for garnish prior to squeezing for juice
- In the base of the shaker, muddle: Green cardamom pods 3 pcs
- Add the remaining ingredients: White rum 50 mlLime juice 15 mlSugar syrup 10 mlCardamom bitters 2 dashesChilled water 10 ml
- Shake all ingredients with ice and fine strain into the chilled glass
- Garnish with a lime wedge
Tips
- Lightly crack the 3 cardamom pods before muddling to expose the seeds without pulverizing the husks, which can add bitterness.
- Muddle gently for just a few seconds in the shaker base; over-muddling releases papery husk flavor that overwhelms the rum.
- Shake hard with ice for a full 12-15 seconds to aerate and properly dilute, since the recipe already includes 10 ml chilled water separately.
- Double strain through a fine mesh strainer into the cocktail glass to catch cardamom fragments and husk bits before serving with the lime wedge.
History
The Daiquiri is widely credited to Jennings Cox, an American mining engineer working near the town of Daiquiri in southeastern Cuba, who is said to have mixed local Bacardi rum with lime juice and sugar around 1898, during the Spanish-American War, after running short of the ingredients for another drink. Some accounts credit an associate, engineer Francesco Domenico Pagliuchi, with actually suggesting the name after Cox described the mix as a kind of rum sour, while a later obituary claim for bartender Emilio "Maragato" Gonzalez as inventor was publicly disputed by Pagliuchi himself. The drink reached the United States about a decade later when Rear Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, who had tasted Cox's original in Cuba, introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C. The Cardamom Daiquiri is a variation on this classic sour built on rum, lime, and sugar, muddling green cardamom pods into the shake to give the drink a warm, aromatic spice note layered over the traditional citrus and rum base.
