Aged rum, lime and raspberry syrup shake into a bright, fruit-laced sour, with curaçao threading orange through the berry and softening the citrus edge. Served cold over crushed ice, it drinks juicy and brisk, the rum's warm, rounded depth keeping all that fruit from tipping into sweetness.
Garnish: Orange Wheel
Shaken · Coupe · Crushed
add
Combine the aged rum, lime juice, raspberry syrup, and curaçao in a shaker.
shake
Add crushed ice and shake well until thoroughly chilled and the raspberry color blooms.
strain
Strain into a chilled coupe (or serve over fresh crushed ice in the period style).
garnish
Ornament with seasonal fruit — a slice of orange or fresh raspberries.
No one is credited with inventing the Knickerbocker; it first turns up in print in Jerry Thomas's 1862 Bar-Tender's Guide, the earliest cocktail book published in the United States, where Thomas set it down as a recorder rather than its creator. The name borrows the old nickname for New York's Dutch settlers, a term Washington Irving made popular, and is also tied to a Knickerbocker bar. Later manuals, including an 1888 bartender's guide and the 1895 handbook of New York City's bartenders' association, kept the same core of Santa Cruz rum, raspberry syrup, curaçao and citrus, often trading lime for lemon and trimming the glass with orange and pineapple slices and straws.