Pale pink and served up, the Mary Pickford folds white rum and fresh pineapple juice around a splash of maraschino and a touch of grenadine — tropical and lightly sweet, with shaken pineapple bringing a soft froth and doing the work lime does in a Daiquiri. Maraschino lends a faint almond-and-cherry edge that keeps it from cloying, while the grenadine gives the blush its colour more than it adds sugar.
Garnish: Maraschino Cherry
Shaken · Coupe · Up
add
Combine white rum, fresh pineapple juice, maraschino liqueur, and grenadine in a shaker.
shake
Add ice and shake well until thoroughly chilled and the fresh pineapple juice has frothed.
strain
Double-strain into a chilled coupe, served straight up without ice.
garnish
Garnish with a maraschino cherry.
The drink honours the silent-film star Mary Pickford, though she had no hand in making it — the story sets its creation at a Havana hotel bar in the 1920s, with credit split between two bartenders, Eddie Woelke and Fred Kaufmann, and no firm proof backing either man. Its earliest printed recipe turned up in Basil Woon's 1928 guide When It's Cocktail Time in Cuba, and two years later The Savoy Cocktail Book carried it, measured heavily in rum's favour at three parts to one of pineapple. The modern IBA version, listed among its Unforgettables, evens the rum and pineapple out to equal measures.