Painkiller

Scorpion

The Scorpion is Trader Vic’s rum and brandy sour: 45ml white rum, 22.5ml cognac, 50ml fresh orange juice, 30ml fresh lemon juice and 15ml orgeat, shaken hard and strained over crushed ice in a tiki mug or large rocks glass. The measures are adapted from Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide in its 1972 revised edition. Victor Bergeron, the Trader Vic of the restaurant chain, is credited with it; Punch dates his recipe to 1946, and Tasting Table traces the drink to a Honolulu punch in print by 1938. Difford’s Guide, citing Life magazine, has Vic serving the Scorpion in four-pint bowls made to serve four, and prints his 1972 recipes for a single glass and for a bowl for three or four. The single glass is the same drink at one person’s size. It comes out pale orange, almond-scented and drier than it looks, at about 2.7 UK units. Fresh orange and lemon and an orgeat made from almonds decide it. Orgeat contains nuts, which matters for anyone with an allergy.

Singapore Sling

A Singapore Sling is 30ml gin, 15ml cherry liqueur, 7.5ml Cointreau, 7.5ml Bénédictine, 10ml grenadine, 120ml fresh pineapple juice, 15ml fresh lime juice and a dash of Angostura, shaken hard and strained over fresh ice in a sling or hurricane glass. That is the IBA specification, made here with Cherry Heering. It is a long, pink, fruit-led gin drink with more going on underneath than the colour suggests. It belongs to the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where Raffles, by its own account, credits its bartender Ngiam Tong Boon with creating it in 1915. The date is disputed, and the recipe first poured there is generally accepted to be lost. Fresh pineapple juice decides the result. There is 120ml of it, more than everything else in the glass combined, and juice pressed the same day gives the drink its light foam and its sharp edge. Carton juice gives a flat, sweet one.

Rum Runner

A Rum Runner is a Florida Keys tiki drink: 30ml each of dark and white rum, 15ml each of blackberry and banana liqueur, 10ml grenadine, 15ml fresh lime juice, 45ml pineapple juice and 30ml orange juice, shaken hard and strained over crushed ice in a hurricane glass. A 15ml float of overproof rum is optional. Blended with the ice instead, it becomes the frozen Rum Runner the Keys are known for. The usual account, which Difford’s Guide quotes from the Holiday Isle Tiki Bar’s own site and calls legend, credits the bar’s manager John “Tiki John” Elber with mixing it to clear surplus rum and liqueur before a delivery; the bar took its name in 1971, so the early 1970s is the likely date. That first version had no fruit juice. Pineapple and orange came later and made it the long, fruity drink most bars pour now. It is stronger than it tastes: about 3.0 UK units a glass, 3.9 with the float. Fresh lime and a pomegranate grenadine are what keep it from tasting of boiled sweets.