- Jennings Cox
Jennings Cox, American mining engineer who is said to have invented the drink known as the
daiquiri in the late nineteenth century. Cox was an American expatriate working inCuba . He worked for the Spanish-American Iron Company, situated near the village of Daiquiri, situated 4 miles east ofSantiago de Cuba .It is said that the drink was invented when Cox ran out of gin while entertaining American guests. Wary about serving local rum straight up, Cox added limejuice and sugar to improve the rum’s taste. Consumption of the drink remained localized until 1909, when Admiral Lucius W. Johnson, a US Navy medical officer, tried Cox’s drink. Johnson subsequently introduced it to the Army and Navy Club in
Washington DC , and drinkers of the daiquiri increased over the space of a few decades. [http://www.wetwillies.com/facts.htm]The credit given to Cox remains disputed, with some sources stating that he was assisted by a Cuban engineer named Pagliuchi, or that the drink had already been a Cuban specialty.
Cox lived in
Santiago de Cuba . The writer and journalistRichard Harding Davis wrote his novel "Soldiers of Fortune" (1897) while a guest at Cox's house (O’Toole, 79).Sources
* [http://www.wetwillies.com/facts.htm Wet Wellies: Daiquiri history]
*G.J.A. O’Toole, "The Spanish War: An American Epic 1898" (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 79.
* [http://www.elfloridita.net/en/stories/daiquiri_story.php Daiquiri Story]
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