Mixed Drinks by Herbert W. Green (1895, p.55)
| 0.25 lemon | lemon juice — juice one-quarter lemon | base |
| 1 jigger | rum — N. E., Jamaica or St. Croix rum | base |
| 1 large spoonful | simple syrup — syrup | sweetener |
- Fill a mixing glass two-thirds full of fine ice and add the ingredients.
- Shake, strain into a star champagne glass, and add fruit.
Garnish: Fruit.
Ice: Fine ice
This is a useful rum-sour checkpoint because it keeps multiple regional rum types interchangeable inside one late-century formula.
The drink stays short and shaken, without turning into a fizz or punch cousin.
The Mixicologist by C. F. Lawlor (1895, p.62) — C. F. Lawlor 1895
- Fill the mixing glass two thirds full of fine ice.
- Add the lemon juice, syrup, and rum and shake well.
- Strain into a star Champagne-glass with fruit.
Garnish: Seasonal fruit
- Nose
- Rum and lemon rise cleanly with a cooler sweetness than the darker spirit sours.
- Palate
- It is a direct sour, but the allowed range of rum styles makes it especially useful for tracing how broad the family could be in practice.
- Finish
- The finish is bright, sweet-tart, and rum-led.
- Summary
- A rum branch of the codified late sour line with unusually explicit base-spirit flexibility.
Rum Sour is significant because it shows the sour family expanding across rum categories in a way that starts to point toward later rum sours and, at a distance, Daiquiri logic. It is a clear transitional node rather than just another sour variant.
Because the permitted rums vary widely, balance matters more than strict stylistic orthodoxy.
Compared with Whiskey and Brandy Sour, this version can swing much more dramatically depending on the rum used. That flexibility is historically interesting, not a flaw.