The Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford was the star of silent movies and, along with her husband Douglas Fairbanks, was at the pinnacle of the first generation of movie royalty. She was also one of the original founders of The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.

The drink was created in the 1920s, during Prohibition, by Fred Kaufman who was tending the bar at Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana, Cuba, where Mary was filming at the time.

The Mary Pickford is a tasty, sweet little number made with white rum, maraschino liqueur, grenadine syrup and pineapple juice. The drink was shaken with ice and strained into a martini glass and garnished with maraschino cherry. In this drink maraschino liqueur takes the rum/pineapple combination in an unexpected direction, adding nutty-almond notes to the drink while the grenadine adds a touch of sweetness and colour to it.

Here in Koh the recipe we use is: 50ml Angostura Reserva rum, 15ml grenadine (a sweet syrup made from pomegranates), 5ml Luxardo Maraschino, 40ml pineapple juice. For the grenadine we use real pomegranate syrup (this can be purchased in any high-end off licence) and for the pineapple we use pressed pineapple juice. The ingredients are shaken with ice, strained into a chilled martini glass and we garnish with a raspberry.

Josko Babic