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Doctor Funk

Long drinks and highballs · Summer · Tiki/tropical

4.0 110 ratings

Ingredients

2 1/3 oz Dark/black rum
1/6 oz Absinthe
1/3 oz Grenadine syrup
1/4 oz Sugar syrup 'rich' (2:1)
1/2 oz Lemon juice
1/4 oz Lime juice

How to make

Serve in a double old-fashioned glass

Prepare

  1. 1 Select and pre-chill a DOUBLE OLD-FASHIONED GLASS.
  2. 2 Prepare garnish of lime wedge.

Method

  1. 3 SHAKE all ingredients with ice.
  2. 4 STRAIN into glass filled with crushed ice.

Garnish

  1. 5 Garnish with lime wedge.
  2. 6 Serve with a straw.

Flavour profile

20.1% alc./vol. · 1.8 standard drinks · 238 calories

History

A high rum and absinthe content means several of these faintly liquorice cocktails could necessitate medical attention.

Don Beach created this drink in the early 1950s at his Don The Beachcomber restaurant in Palm Springs. Beach was inspired by and adapted a medicinal absinthe-laced limeade. This limeade had been concocted and prescribed decades earlier by Doctor Bernard Funk, a German physician in Samoa. Dr. Funk served as the personal physician to Robert Louis Stevenson, the renowned author of Treasure Island, during Stevenson's final years in Samoa. Stevenson, who had lifelong bronchial issues, settled in Samoa in 1890 on an estate he named Vailima. The doctor reportedly created a medicinal tonic for the ailing writer using absinthe, lemon juice, lime juice, grenadine, and soda. Frederick O'Brien described this potion in his 1921 book, Mystic Isles of the South Seas. Dr. Funk arrived in Samoa in 1880 and departed in 1911 to return to Germany for medical treatment. He passed away on 8 April 1911, at the age of 66, in a Berlin hospital. According to his will, a block of granite was shipped from Germany to Samoa after his death and erected on the shore of Lake Lanotoo. It bears the inscription, "Dr. Bernhard Funk" along with the dates of his arrival and departure from Samoa, and his birth and death dates. [For more information, tikicentral.com]

Created by Don Beach (Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt)