Cubaine – Recipe from David Embury’s ‘The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks’

Another cocktail employing orange juice illustrates how slight a change to the sour formula will give rise to a different drink

CUBAINE 

1 part Sugar Syrup

1 part Lemon Juice

1 part Orange Juice 

8 parts White Cuban Rum 

Shake with finely crushed ice. 

All the rums blend perfectly with fruit flavours.

I’d normally disagree to the validity to David’s opening statement, but this is an exception, unlike tomorrows Capitol, this small amount of orange juice really does make a difference.

Last year in Tales of the Cocktail in Edinburgh Dave Arnold did a fascinating talk on the use of acids in drinks and made us all orange juice with the same acidity of lime juice by adding citric and malic acid to it. This as a revelation as it opens a lot of scope when making drinks as instead of needing to add lemon or lime juice for acidity you can add apple juice for example, and then citric and malic acid powder, and end up with apple juice with the same bite as citrus, but none of their flavour.

A lot of the subtlety of this is lost on consumers unless its spelt out in the drink name, but it nonetheless allows some very interesting flavour combinations.

I think of this because this drink would be the perfect example of the time to use it, it’s just a daiquiri with a splash of orange, however if we ‘Arnold’ this and remove all of the lime, and then increase the acidity of the orange we’ll start ending up with some interesting variations.

I have a new task for today when I get into work.