Wednesday, March 16, 2011

carver flip

2 oz Cruzan Aged Rum
1/2 oz Orange Curaçao
1 Egg Yolk
1 cube Demerara Sugar

Muddle the sugar cube with some water until it is dissolved. Add rest of the ingredients and ice, shake, and double strain into a cocktail coupe. Garnish with peanut butter powder (see text).

The first drink I was drawn to at Stoddard's last Wednesday night was the Carver Flip. It seemed more like a night closer than a first drink, so I put it off until after the Scarlet Monk. The Carver Flip is a rum-based egg yolk drink that reminded me a lot of the mystical Peanut Malt Flip, so I was definitely curious. Unlike the Peanut Malt Flip that is shaken with a teaspoon of peanut butter, the Carver Flip was garnished with peanut butter powder. Bar manager Eric Cross collaborated with Stoddard's kitchen to create the garnish. The peanut butter was mixed with tapioca maltodextrin, a modified food starch that stabilizes fatty compounds, and the pair was dessicated in a roto-vap into a fine powder. For a name, Eric made reference to George Washington Carver who promoted the use of legumes like peanuts to revitalize the soil for improving cotton yields. Moreover, Carver developed a wide number of applications for peanuts and is best known for promoting peanut butter (although you would have to attribute its discovery to the Aztecs a few centuries before).
The peanut butter powder garnish donated greatly to the aroma. The rich aged rum flavors on the sip were smoothed out by the egg yolk, while the swallow contained the rum's heat and molasses note that co-mingled with the Curaçao's orange flavor. Unlike in the Peanut Malt Flip where the peanut flavor was from the beginning, here, the peanut butter integrated into the drink's taste over time. Once it did, it worked rather well with the rum's heat on the swallow.

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