Black Strap , also known as Black Stripe, is a primitive mixture of rum, hot or cold water, and molasses that went on to become one of the cornerstone drinks of rural New England. (“Strap” was a seventeenth-century English slang term for wine.) When it first appears, in Charles Johnson’s pseudonymous 1724 General History of the Pyrates, it is described as “a strong Liquor” consumed by sailors in Newfoundland waters, “made from Rum, Molossus, and Chowder [i.e., spruce] Beer.” The spruce beer, a popular antiscorbutic, places it in the same family as Flip, another sailor’s drink, but once Black Strap made it to shore and found its way inland, it rapidly split into two drinks: Calibogus with the spruce beer, Black Strap without. See Flip.
So widespread was Black Strap’s popularity in rural New England that in the late eighteenth and early and mid-nineteenth centuries, it became almost as much a part of the popular image of the canny Yankee countryman as the Mint Julep was of the southern cavalier. Although Jerry Thomas (a Yankee himself) printed a recipe for it (as Black Stripe) in his 1862 book, from which it was repeatedly plagiarized, it is doubtful if anyone in America but nostalgic old Vermonters drank it then or any time after, although it would continue to appear in American bar guides well into the twentieth century. See Thomas, Jeremiah P. “Jerry”.
As a sailor’s drink, however, Black Strap got around; indeed, Charles H. Baker Jr. recorded a version of it, sophisticated with ice and bitters, still being served in Jamaica in the 1930s, and it appeared in European bar guides with enough variation in the formulae to suggest that it was still occasionally served. After the Second World War it is heard from no more. See Baker, Charles Henry, Jr.
Recipe: In tumbler, stir 15 ml molasses with 15 ml warm water until molasses has dissolved. Add 60 ml dark aromatic rum and fill with shaved ice. Garnish with nutmeg. For hot Black Strap, substitute 90 ml boiling water for warm water and ice.
Baker, Charles H., Jr. Gentleman’s Companion, vol. 2. New York: Derrydale, 1939.
Farmer, John S. Slang and Its Analogues, vol. 1. N.p., 1890.
Johnson, Charles. General History of the Pyrates. London: 1724.
“Mr. Hill.” Concord (NH) Patriot, February 27, 1810, 3.
Thomas, Jerry. How to Mix Drinks. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1862.
By: David Wondrich