marco-antonio

1/3 Juice of a Grapefruit (2 oz)
1 tsp Maraschino Liqueur (Luxardo)
2 oz Gin (Beefeater 24)
1 tsp Grenadine (Homemade)
1/2 Egg White

Shake 10 seconds without and 30 seconds with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Last night, I was thinking about the Josephine Baker and decided to flip through the pdf of the 1935 La Florida Cocktail Book from The Florida Bar in Havana, Cuba. One recipe that appealed to me was the Marco-Antonio perhaps due to Marco (technically Marconi after the Marconi Wireless) pestering me at the time by continuously jumping up on my computer desk for attention. The recipe reminded me a bit of the Hawaiian which I remembered as a gin drink (although we made it as the dark rum version). The Marco-Antonio's measurement for the juice made me wonder what volume of liquid would be in a 1935 grapefruit. I ended up choosing an equal parts ratio to make the drink neither too boozy nor too juicy, besides figuring that a vintage grapefruit was probably the juice equivalent of a navel orange of today (cerca 6 oz). Also, a similar recipe on CocktailDB supported the equal parts concept:

Edith Day Cocktail
• 1 1/2 oz Grapefruit Juice
• 1 1/2 oz Gin
• 1 Egg White
• 1/2 tsp Sugar
Shake with ice and strain over a glass filled with crushed ice.

For a gin, I chose Beefeater 24 which has some rather strong grapefruit notes although many of the gin flavors were lost or subdued in the egg-juice mix. The grapefruit carried over in the nose and the drink was rather sweet tasting. The gin notes did appear briefly on the sip after the fruit wave, and the Maraschino popped out at the end of the swallow. The egg white provided a good head on the drink and some smoothness to the drink, all while not seeming like an egg drink (at least the way they do with straight spirits). If we had chosen to use a third of a modern grapefruit, the drink would have been larger than most of our cocktail glasses and would have probably made for a good highball drink instead. Perhaps some tonic water or champagne could add some extra zip in that format. As for zip in this format, the Maraschino did add some complexity although some cocktail bitters such as Peychaud's or orange, whether added in the mix or added dropwise to the egg white froth surface, might have been a nice touch.