I never got around to experimenting with the Kummel I bought a few months back. I think I got a couple of decent drinks out of my recent exploration of apricot brandy so I figure I will try and do the same with Kummel over the next few days. To kick things off here is a slightly unusual Kummel drink from the Savoy. This one drags Kummel away from Northern Europe to holiday in sunny Jamaica, where it meets fun ingredients like Pimento Dram liqueur and Jamaican rum.

Recipe for a Kingston Cocktail

1 ½ oz Jamaican Rum (Appleton’s Estate)

½ oz Kummel (Wolfschmidt)

½ oz orange juice

1 dash pimento dram (I used a little over half a teaspoon of my homemade stuff – just to make sure it didn’t get lost)

Harry Craddock reckons that the mixture of Kummel and Pimento Dram is what makes the drink special. There just may be something in it. I was surprised by how strongly the allspice came through. Obviously the Kummel dominates, but the pimento dram contributes a clear spicy undercurrent that mixes nicely with the rum and caraway.

CockailDB lists several variations of this drink, which also appears as a Lupe Velez, a Mexicano, and a Surprised Cocktail. There are slight differences among them but the principle remains the same. The Lupe Velez and Mexicano use light rum instead of Jamaican rum, with the former increasing the pimento dram to ¼ oz while the latter keeps the pimento dram at just a dash but ups the kummel and orange juice. The Surprised Cocktail is identical to the Kingston. I wouldn’t mind trying the Lupe Velez sometime, just to see what the extra pimento dram does.

The Kingston must have been popular at some stage to pick up some many different names and variations. That seems pretty good going to a drink using such a counter intuitive combination of ingredients.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Jamacian, Pimento Dram (allspice liqueur), Recipes, kummel, orange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.