Jungle Bird

Zombie

A Zombie is 45ml Jamaican dark rum, 45ml gold Puerto Rican rum and 30ml Demerara rum with 20ml fresh lime juice, 15ml falernum, 15ml Donn’s Mix, a teaspoon of grenadine, a dash of Angostura and six drops of Pernod, flash blended with cracked ice and poured into a zombie glass with mint. Those are the IBA’s measures. About 5.0 UK units in one glass. The Oxford Companion says Donn Beach created it in 1934 at Don the Beachcomber’s in Hollywood, and refused to serve more than two to a customer. Difford’s Guide says his recipes were notated in a secret code of numbered bottles and elusive mixes, and the Companion says Jeff Berry found the original formula in 2006 in the notebook of a former Beachcomber’s headwaiter, Richard Santiago. Donn’s Mix, two parts grapefruit juice to one of cinnamon syrup, is what separates it from a strong rum punch.

Painkiller

A Painkiller is 60ml of Pusser’s Rum, 120ml of pineapple juice, 30ml of fresh orange juice and 30ml of cream of coconut, given a hard 10 to 12 second shake and strained onto cubed ice in a tiki mug or a big glass, with fresh nutmeg grated on top. About 2.4 UK units. Cream of coconut is coconut and sugar, usually with no dairy, but check the label. The name belongs to Pusser’s. Pusser’s prints the name with the registered symbol on its own Painkiller page, and the Oxford Companion says the company owns the trademark for the Pusser’s Painkiller cocktail. The recipe here is its own: four parts pineapple, one of cream of coconut and one of orange, with Pusser’s to suit. Difford’s Guide says it trademarked the name in the United States and the UK in 2003 and in 2010 forced a New York bar called Painkiller to rename itself PKNY. Pusser’s traces the drink to Daphne Henderson’s Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke, in the British Virgin Islands.

Negroni

A Negroni is 30ml each of gin, Campari and sweet vermouth, stirred with ice for 20 to 30 seconds and strained over fresh ice in a rocks glass, with an orange peel expressed over the top. About 2.4 UK units. The measures are the IBA’s; the IBA builds the drink in the glass and garnishes it with half an orange slice. Difford’s Guide gives the most widely reported account: Florence in 1919, at the Casoni Bar, where the bartender Fosco Scarselli is said to have replaced the soda in Count Camillo Negroni’s Americano with gin. The Oxford Companion has the drink named in a surviving letter of October 1920 and then absent under that name until 1947. A French book of 1929 by Alimbau and Milhorat, in the Internet Archive’s scan, gives equal parts of the three as the Campari Mixte. Each third has a job. Gin gives strength and juniper, the red bitter gives bitterness and orange, and the vermouth gives body and sugar. With no juice or soda in the glass, a tired vermouth shows at once.

Mai Tai

A Mai Tai is aged rum, lime, orange curaçao and orgeat: 30ml amber Jamaican rum, 30ml Martinique molasses rum, 30ml fresh lime juice, 15ml orange curaçao, 15ml orgeat and 7.5ml sugar syrup, shaken hard and strained over crushed ice in a double rocks glass, with a spent lime shell and a sprig of mint. This is the IBA specification. There is no pineapple or orange juice in it. Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron said he created it in 1944 and gave the first two to friends from Tahiti, one of whom said “Mai tai roa ae”, which gave it the name, as Famous Hotels quotes him. The Oxford Companion places his restaurant in Oakland and adds that Donn Beach’s widow, Phoebe, wrote in 2002 that he made a Mai Tai in 1933, though the Companion finds good reason to doubt that Vic copied it. Orgeat is almond syrup, so the drink contains nuts. A glass holds about 3.0 UK units.