2 ½ oz gold rum
1 teaspoon orange curacao liqueur
½ oz raspberry syrup (see below for recipe)
½ oz fresh lime juice (save lime “shell” for garnish)
Fresh raspberries for garnish
Combine rum, curacao, raspberry syrup, & lime juice in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake until frosty. Strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice.
To garnish, flatten a squeezed-out half lime shell into a “cap” and place on top of the drink, then top with a few fresh raspberries before serving.
2 cups of demerara sugar
Pinch of salt
1 cup of water
12 oz raspberries (fresh or frozen)
Stir sugar and water over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Turn off heat, add raspberries, and stir and crush the raspberries until they’re broken up into a pulp. Strain into a jar and refrigerate for up to a week.
Any syrup not used within a week can be frozen for later use.
In 1809, Washington Irving published “A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty”, under the name "Diedrich Knickerbocker".
The name Knickerbocker originally came from a style of pants that Dutch settlers wore, but thanks to this book, the word came to signify an upper-crusty New Yorker who could trace their ancestry to the original Dutch settlers. Before long though, people just started using the word to mean anything and everything New York-y.
City leaders started naming streets and landmarks “knickerbocker”. Businesses across the city started naming themselves things like Knickerbocker Magazine or Knickerbocker beer, there’s a Knickerbocker hotel, and even the name of the New York Knicks is short for knickerbocker.
It’s not surprising that the name also attached itself to a cocktail. The new drink started being mentioned in newspapers in the 1850s, and then Jerry Thomas published the first written recipe for the drink in 1862. It’s made with golden rum, orange curacao (triple sec), lime juice, and raspberry syrup, which was basically the grenadine of the 19th century.
There are a bunch of variations on this cocktail now with a ton of added ingredients, but this version is almost identical to the original Jerry Thomas recipe.