Acids add sour without citrus and appeal to your inner chemistry geek
I never order dry martinis at bars. If I want a glass of gin, I’ll pour it at home and cry into it privately, like you’re supposed to. So I rarely see a cocktail that is completely clear and colorless.
Which is why the drink I had recently at Caffffffffffffè Propaganda in Rome intrigued me. I’d ordered from a segment of the cocktail menu featuring spaceships and a futuristic font, and the drink arrived in an elegant coupe, no bubbles or ice shards flfloating on its surface, faintly pearlescent. The menu had described it only as “unexpected” and “citric.”
The spirit clearly was rum, and the drink had a silky mouth feel and a deeply tart, sweet flflavor. But I couldn’t place the citrus.
On our way out, we queried a staffffer, who confifirmed my suspicion. The drink was rum, rich simple syrup and citric acid. In a message later, bar t e nder Pat r i c k P i s t o - lesi verified: It was “nothing more than a classic daiquiri,” stirred and using the clarity of citric acid to trick the guest.
I liked the startling dissonance between the drink’s appearance and its flflavor, but I felt a little guilty. It was a daiquiri with no limes in sight.
One of the commandments of the craft cocktail movement — between “Thou Shalt Not Shake a Manhattan” and “Thou Shall Keep Holy (and Refrigerated) Thy Vermouth” — is to avoid commercial sour mix, that manufactured, chemical-laden, neon-green syrup that was everywhere in the crappy drinks of the 1970s and 1980s. Check out the ingredients listed on a bottle sometime: a lot of multisyllabic chemicals, and citric acid will be prominent. The acid used to be made from citrus fruits, but since the 1920s, it has more frequently been made through the fermentation of mold.
I t ’s e a s y t o ma k e c i t - ric acid sound creepy, but remember: Penicillin is made through a similar process. There’s a chemistry- geek strain running through some craft cocktail bars, an offshoot of modernist cuisine. Here it was used cleverly and only flflavors