Kamikaze

Taste

An ounce each of vodka, orange liqueur, and lime. A third of the glass is lime juice, so it lands sour first and orange second, and the vodka is there to carry both. Three ounces in a coupe rather than the shot glass it usually arrives in, which gives it room to read as a drink. Lime twist.

History

Two accounts, a decade apart. Peter Miller, writing in Ski in October 1979, put the drink out of Florida in the early to mid 1970s and moving from there to New York, and printed the earliest known recipe: an ounce and a half of pre-chilled vodka, a dash of lime, and one drop of Cointreau, served with no ice because everything in it was already frozen. John Mariani, in Motorboating and Sailing for January 1989, credited Tony Lauriano at Les Pyrenees in New York in 1972, who called it the Jesus Christ Superstar until customers found the name strange. Montebello Brands was bottling an Original Kamikaze Cocktail by 1975. Poured here, it is an ounce each of vodka, orange liqueur, and lime, shaken, coupe, lime twist.

• Vintage American Cocktails, Kamikaze

Same shape, other bottles

The Daisy family, with the bottle that changed.

• Katinkaapricot liqueur for orange liqueur
• Margaritatequila for vodka
• Mezcal Margaritamezcal for vodka
• Lani-Honilight rum and lemon juice for vodka and lime juice
• Sidecarcognac and lemon juice for vodka and lime juice
• Final Wardrye and lemon juice for vodka and lime juice