The Knickerbocker (alias Knickerbocker Punch), a single-serving punch generally based on rum and orange curaçao, is one of the oldest American “fancy drinks” on record. Although we do not know its precise origins—“Knickerbocker” is a nickname for New Yorker—its first known appearance is in 1843 on the iconic list of drinks Peter Brigham offered at the Concert Hall in Boston. See Brigham, Peter Bent. Brigham’s list was widely imitated, and by the 1850s Knickerbockers of one sort or another were served all over the United States, plus in Canada, London, and even Paris, where it is documented in 1859 (and was probably being served a decade before that). However, since Brigham never published any recipes or even descriptions of the drinks, these versions were all likely to be a word-of-mouth interpretations or pure improvisations.
That is reflected in the diversity of the earliest published recipes, from the 1860s. The first was published by Jerry Thomas in 1862; Thomas gave no source, and his travels had been wide. See Thomas, Jeremiah P. “Jerry”. His version was a fairly conventional rum punch, although it used lime juice, a rarity at the time, and the curaçao that sweetened it was reinforced with raspberry syrup, a decidedly fancy touch. Four more recipes came out before the end of the decade. Only one of them even resembles Thomas’s. The others include ingredients such as Rhine wine, brandy, port, arrack, and various fruits and exclude the rum, the curaçao, the lime juice, or all three. There is no way of establishing which recipe, if any, is closest to Brigham’s.
Eventually, Thomas’s recipe became the basis for further variations until the end of the nineteenth century, when the drink, sweet and rummy, fell out of fashion. However, in the 1930s its shaved ice, flavors of rum and lime and fruit, and rustic squeezed-out lime shell garnish all made the Knickerbocker one of the harbingers of a new mixological style; one that would come to be called tiki. See tiki.
Recipe: Shake with ice 60 ml aged, non-Jamaican rum, 30 ml orange curaçao, 15 ml raspberry syrup, and 15 ml lime juice. Strain into Old-Fashioned glass full of fine ice and garnish with lime shell, pineapple chunks, and raspberries.
Campbell, Charles B. The American Barkeeper. San Francisco: Mullin, Mahon, 1867.
“The Contrast.” Boston Christian Reflector, February 1, 1843, 1.
Thomas, Jerry. How to Mix Drinks. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1862.
By: David Wondrich