September 13, 2019 • 23 mins
This simple Brazilian cocktail – just lime, sugar, cachaça (a sugarcane juice liquor), and ice – has a complex history. Anney and Lauren dip into the stories behind the caipirinha.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of I Heart Radio
and Stuff Media. I'm Anny Rees and I'm Lauren vocal Baum,
and today we're talking about the Cypurna. Yes, and we're
going to do our best pronunciation wise. Yes, oh Portuguese.
It's it's so difficult. Well, I mean, I'm sure for us, Yes,
it's so different. I mean right right, And I was
thinking about it. And this episode is going to premiere.
(00:29):
I don't know when you're going to be listening to it,
but it's going to come out on Friday, the first
Friday for a long time to have a full moon.
And we have curached ourselves with a difficult to pronounce episode.
But it's about something wonderful. It is. It is about
a delightful, delightful cocktail. It is. I've had a few
in my day, not not too many, but a few.
(00:51):
And the first time I had one, I was in
prou and there is a few blocks from where I
live that has them. It was the first place I
went to when I moved in. But I think that
those are they're much sweeter than what they normally are.
I think, yeah, the sugar involved is meant to be
relatively minimal. Yeah, those are very very sweet. I mean similarly,
(01:12):
I've had mohitoes that range anywhere from like kind of
like bracing to just syrup. So it's a bit of
a cabin it is. It is um. But this brings
us to our question what is it Well. A caperna
(01:34):
is a cocktail made simply with lime, wedges and sugar
muddled together, then topped with ice and cashasa, which is
this liquor distilled from sugarcane juice. The cashassa used is
often unaged, clear and clean tasting, sort of like a
white rum um. The result is a drink that's sweet
and tart and strong um, possibly with hints of other
(01:55):
flavors from the booze. And Yeah, the thing about cashasa
is that it's not quite like rum um. Rum is
distilled from molasses, which is a sweet and rich and
sticky byproduct of the sugar refining industry. Becaushasa is closer
to what we'd call rum agricole um, because again it's
distilled for the actual juice of the sugar cane. And
(02:16):
we got to visit a cane farm and agricol distillery
on Oahu when we were out in Hawaii Um. The
brand name's Cohana. It was so good and that the
tasting was really i opening because they gave us some
some like fresh cane juice when we first walked in um.
And the the products that they are making from it
are so interesting and complex, like the flavors ranged from
(02:40):
like grassy to fruity, too spicy to sort of funky
in the unaged forms, and then tended towards like rich
and warm and spicy or or nutty if it had
been aged in wood barrels. I had never tried anything
quite like it. So good, It was so good and
you can't get a air Yeah, um, rum rum agricult. Yeah,
(03:02):
be on the lookout for it um or yes um
because yes, Cashassa specifically can be aged in some like
twenty to thirty different kinds of wood, including stuff that
we definitely don't see booze being aged in here in
the United States, like a like Brazilian zebra wood supposed
Leland's just a lovely like like cinnamon nutcrunch kind of
(03:23):
flavor to it. I'm into that right. There are a
couple other names for cashassa, by the way, like a
pinga or aguar dente by Brazilian law and according to
the International Bar Tenders Association, a cheekpurna is only cashassa,
sugar and lime. All variations thereof, specifically fruit wise, must
be specified in the name, like strawberry cypurna. For example,
(03:47):
it translates to little countryside drink or country little girl,
depending on the translation you find. It is Brazil's national drink,
the cappy kype I suppose the unofficial drink of the
twenty seen Olympics. Nineteen sixty Brazilian folklorist Osvaldo Ogier had
over six fifty names for kishasa, including zunzum, also Battita, paulista,
(04:11):
a k a sal pallo shake, Kasa caprina kshasa prepared
hillbilly style types. There are a lot of different types.
Many bars of Brazil offers three types of caprinia, Basic,
especial and lukso, depending on the price quality of the
cashassa brand used. Also fairly common to see a Kaprioska,
a version made with vodka and also with basic especial
(04:35):
and looks so tears. There's also the Kyprissima, made with
white rum. Um Sake is another popular substitute, but I
didn't find a cutesie name for one spoke. Well, let
it write in and let us listeners. Brazil has just
so many types of fruit, all of which can and
probably have been muddled into this cocktail. A whole bunch
of different spices can go into the drink as well.
(04:57):
Another thing that can vary the type of line. The
predominant one is lima tahti. That's the tart line that
we know as a Tahitian lime or a Persian lime.
But confusingly, a lime called lima to persia is a
close second, which is a sweet lime with a yellow
skin that we would know as a Palestinian or Indian lime. Yeah. Limao,
(05:21):
by the way, is the word for both lemon and
lime and Portuguese. I'm like, y'all get your sitters together.
Maybe it's like, you know what, there's a lot of
there's a lot of qualifiers that go into their like
these sure locational names. Anyway, when it comes to nutrition,
(05:42):
drink responsibly. Yes, I will say that as cocktails go,
this is a relatively light one with minimal sweeteners, no
heavy cream or eggs in there. So yeah, drink responsibly
when it comes to numbers from alcohol in Latin America,
a social and cultural history. Cashassa is the quote third
(06:03):
most produced distilled drink in the world as of two
thousand eight. And I've seen varying numbers on this, but
but as of two thousand and eight there were at
least five thousand distilleries making cashassa. It was some twelve thousand, yeah,
m hm uh. And in terms of the amount of
its amount of it that's produced, I've also seen conflicting
(06:26):
numbers up to like one point five billion leaders but
um anywhere from like one billion to two billion, which
is a widespread of numbers. Um. But most of that
is sold in Brazil, and like less than a percent
of it um is exported. Mostly it's exported to Germany. Huh,
(06:50):
all right, yeah, international cashass today is June twelve, and
Brazil's oh my goodness, we're doing something on time. Brazil
dia nacion no date cashasa is September. Were totally meant
to do that, Yes, sure, ye, perfect, and we nailed it. Um.
(07:14):
It is pretty new to the United States, though it
had to be labeled Brazilian rum to be imported until
a lot of other things I read from people who
are in the know. When it comes to Kashasa said, unfortunately,
a lot of Americans have been exposed to lower quality. Yeah,
so perhaps experiences have not been good with it. Yes, yes,
(07:38):
the kind of like more Bernie aggressive industrial kshasa and
um Whereas some of the or a lot of the
stuff that's being made there now is being made by
these independent producers who are doing these lovely um uh,
personalized things. Hence part of the difficulty with the numbers,
I think, because some of them are sort of doing
(07:59):
their own things out in the quoked middle of nowhere
and not really you know, distributing or anything but anywhere. Anyway,
that about brings us to some history, it does, But
first it brings us to a quick word from our sponsor,
(08:20):
and we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Another
cocktail hour. Another messy history. That's our tradition. We didn't
make the rules, but that's that's that's them's the rules.
That's what they say. That is historians agree it probably
originated in Paraite sal Paolo, Brazil, kind of in that area.
(08:41):
That's about all they agree on. And even that it's
kind of tenuous. It is um but okay, let's let's
trace all of the ingredients for this into Brazil. So
limes probably came into the America's earliest in a Columbus.
He brought citrus seeds with him, including lines probably again
(09:03):
probably yeah, either way, citrus trees were being grown and
what's now Brazil by the Portuguese by about fifteen forty. Meanwhile,
Um the Portuguese started planting sugarcane around fifteen sixteen, and
Brazil was the first place in the Americas where sugar
was produced commercially starting in fifteen fifty, with with mills
(09:24):
um springing up along the coast of the Atlantic. Because
shassa has been in Brazil since the fift hundreds, Brazil
was making alcohol from sugarcane for longer than just about
anyone very soon after the Portuguese first planted there. It's
thought that the word um cashassa was the name that
enslaved Africans working in these sugar mills gave to um,
(09:45):
to the layer of foam that forms at the at
the top of pots when sugarcane juice is boiled down
at the start of the refining process. Um the phone
was considered a waste product, but some of these enslaved
people began collecting and fermenting it, or so the story
goes on. Distillers were up and running by five three
(10:05):
hundred forty nine. By sixte At first, casa was viewed
as a drink for the country folk and mostly enslaved workers.
No self respecting city folk would be caught with it
aside for aside from medicinal uses of course, um and
yeah that those upper classes would have been consuming European
drinks like wines and ports. It was considered a basic
(10:29):
ration for the enslaved through the sixteen and seventeen hundreds,
though it faced a number of prohibition efforts from the
Portuguese government in attempts to curb drunkenness and also to
better control the economy. Um. One of those efforts was
passed into law on June twelfth, seventeen forty four, which
is now International Cashasday. Eventually, as the upper and middle
(10:52):
classes of Brazil moved towards overthrowing the Portuguese monarchy and
declaring independence in the early eighteen hundreds, cashassa was embraced
as this like local and patriotic beverage by those classes,
and then the large scale availability of ice um would
have been the last ingredient to kind of fall into place.
(11:13):
The North American ice trade started coming to Brazil in
the mid eighteen hundreds. You can see our episode Savor
on Ice from January of nineteen for for more about
the ice trade. Every now and then, I'm just like
the title, that's so funny. That's that's you can and
(11:34):
y'all have any to thank for those titles or to curse,
depending on your taste. So now we have all the ingredients.
What about the cocktail? Several possibilities. Possibility one, it was
concocted as a symptom reliever for Spanish flu towards the
end of World War One, or perhaps earlier in the
nineteenth century. The original recipe was certainly packed with those
(11:56):
medicinal ingredients green lemon, honey, and garlic at the time,
and green lemon here probably meant lime. One of the
French words for limes citrone vair. So that's that's what
I suspect. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, Perhaps this drink was
invented earlier elsewhere, but took place in the port city
(12:18):
of South Polo. A historian from Parade found a document
dating back to eighteen fifty six with a mention of
this cocktail and its potential to stave off cholera. Quote
because of the concern with colra and water. By necessity,
we began mixing augrdente with water, sugar and limes because
it was prohibited to drink straight water. H huh possibility
(12:39):
to sailors trying to ward off scurvy adopted kshata instead
of rum as their spirit of choice to add their
sitters to when arriving to Brazil. Or maybe it was
a spirit of necessity. Um, I feel like half of
our cocktails are scurvy based. Yep, yep. Lime plus booze
was a common scurvy preventative by the eighteen fifties, and
you can hear more about that in our episode on
(13:01):
Lime or our episode on the Gin and Tonic or
whiskey Sour or whiskey sour. That's right, feel like most
of our cocktail hours or well, I didn't realize how
terrible it was. I recently read an article about just
exactly what. Oh yeah, it's not nice. That is no
wonder anyway. Um, it was believed to help with not
(13:24):
just scurvy and the Spanish flu but everything ranging from
bad luck to yes, cholera Okay, possibility three. Maybe it
was a party drink. Yes, created to show off at
parties and salpallo. It was a way to showcase the
ingredients of the country. Yeah again as as a as
a kind of national pride sort of thing. Possibility for
(13:48):
slave traders drink this mixture as a scurvy prevention on
the way back to Portugal from Brazil. Or possibility five.
Farmers created it to use up their extra CASHASA. At
some point someone got the bright idea to remove the
garlic and honey and balance the sweetness of the line
with a bit of sugar. I would imagine this is
when we're moving away from medicinal Two more fun, more
(14:12):
fun times. Yes. Yes. During the nineteen two Modern Art
Week and international event, Brazil featured the capperna. However, it
came to be European Tour has played a huge hand
in popularizing it in the nineteen seventies, and soon it
was known around the globe. Starting around the turn of
the twenty one century, UM more small artisan cashassa distilleries
(14:34):
started opening up in Brazil, and UH larger brands started
producing more high end specialty cashassas as well. In two
thousand three, the Cana was officially named Brazil's national drink
and defined as this combination of lime, sugar and cashassa
with an alcohol content of fifteen to thirty six and
without the quote addition of any substance that alters the
(14:58):
natural sensorial character juristics since sorial characteristics don't hear that
free tossed about too often only in translation um in
two thousand and six, and I suspect that this was
related to Brazil's kind of campaign to get cashassa recognized
by the United States and the European Union, which I've
(15:19):
been until then had been labeling it as Brazilian rum Um.
This group of researchers demonstrated that you can definitely tell
RUMs and cashasas apart based on the differences in the
flavor compounds contained in each like under like like spectromty
like yeah yeah. Then in Casa, producer Leblan launched the
(15:44):
Save the Cyburnia campaign, claiming that seven of ten Cybrina
is served do not contain cashassa. Yeah they were um,
they're looking to to bring awareness to the spirit. The
campaign included a petition to Unicode to create Kuyperna emoji
and I love it. What I just feel like I
(16:04):
wouldn't be able to differentiate it from any other similarly
colored cocktail. But maybe that's I need to learn my emojis. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's a it's a very distinct like it's a
little little like high ball glass with two little, two
little wedges of lime and it in some ice cubes. Okay. Yeah.
I read a lot of articles about the type of
(16:25):
ice you should use, and then I read some articles
about not only the glass you should serve it in,
but the glass you should make it in, because some
people were saying you should make it in one and
then pour it in another, and that depends on what
ice you're using. Oh yeah, and I I read a
number of things about about like straining controversies and oh yeah,
(16:48):
what a world. Um at any rate, in the United
States finally recognized Cashasa as this specifically Brazilian product um
and no longer required it to be labeled rum um.
The recognition did come with the stipulation that Brazil needed
to start classifying Bourbon and Tennessee whiskeys as being specifically
(17:10):
American products love that. Yeah. Uh but yeah, that's that's
about what we have to say about the Caprinia. It's
a there's so much more about Casasa out there that
I definitely want to do a whole episode on it
(17:31):
at some point. There's a lot of um, all of
this really fascinating UM nitty gritty historical stuff that goes
into um, how it was being used in the slave trade.
It became like quite a big part of what the
Portuguese were trading to people in Africa in exchange for humans.
Um and uh so depressing and um and and really
(17:57):
um economically interesting history. Yeah, we will return to that,
not today, not today. Uh. We do have a tiny
bit more for you in this episode, but first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(18:24):
and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with listener cheers, cheers. Amanda wrote, and while
it's not food related, really, I still have to tell
you about the time I visited the West Edmonton Mall
when I was seven. We were on a road trip
passing through and the family is staying with said it
was a musty. At the time, it was the largest
(18:45):
mall in the world. It had an amusement park with
a roller coaster and indoor water park. In the water
park there is an artificial beach with sand and machine
made waves. You can see it from the outside through windows,
and I remember standing with my nose us to the
glass in awe. I also remember there being a glass
enclosure with peacocks. Wow. Sadly, my mom said no, it
(19:08):
isn't going to either park, but all these years later,
I still remember how impressive it was. Now about fairy tales,
you have asked several times for food related fairy tale suggestions,
if you've not already read them, I would like to
suggest three may Peaches, which is French, and Princess fur Ball.
I know the last one doesn't sound like it has
to do with food, but trust me, the princess has
mad cooking skills or in some version she straight up
(19:30):
has magic spices. Yes, thank you for the fairy tale recommendations.
I've been thinking about. We need to bring that back. Yeah. Yeah,
I suspect that Alice in Wonderland is going to be
our next selection. Yes, but yeah, please keep sending the suggestions.
And this made me think of um, I've never been
(19:50):
to them. All of America. But I've seen the Mary
Kate Nashley Okay, and I still think about this day
and you use the cowork of ours. A friend of
ours us we were talking about it and we were
both like, I know, there's a roller coaster in there.
That's about all I know. Yeah. Maybe maybe one day,
maybe that will be our next field trip. Uh Kirk wrote,
(20:13):
thanks for the Fish and Chips podcast. I do fancy
myself a bit of an expert on what constitutes good
fish and chips, having grown up with the best fish
and chip in the world, I haven't every time I
see it on a menu, and I've tried it from
Essex to Bengaluru, and I can say with certainty you
have not had the best fish and chips until you
have been to St. John's in the surrounding area in
(20:33):
Newfoundland and had proper fish and chips and chosen which
shop is your favorite? You see in St John's fish
and chip shops are akin to religion and politics and
equally divisive. While mushy peas are an option, but more
common are dressing and gravy with fried onions. Some shops
even offer fish that was caught that morning for the
(20:54):
ultimate freshness. You see. Cod is king in Newfoundland. It
was a foundation for our economy for over five years.
It's the reason England had fish and chips and an
empire for that matter. Currently, I am part of the
great Newfoundland diaspora living in Strange Lands, Upper Canada, and
any trip home is not complete without a feed of
fish and chips. I hope you have the chance to
(21:17):
visit God's country and try it yourselves. You should also
try fish and brewis, which is salt cod cooked with
hardtack and scrunchions. Newfoundland is one of the few places
where you can still get hard tack. And I'm not
going to tell you what scrunchions are. Love it mystery intrigued.
He also said they're puffins there, so oh man, Yeah,
(21:40):
well that sounds great. I love these hard cells. Yeah
you should go next. Yeah. Also, I apologize if I
if I butchered any of that. I'm so American. We
actually took itally of how many times we mispronounced things
this episode. It was a bit lower than I thought
I was going to be. Yeah. I thought that I
was going to mess up Cashasa like a lot more
than I did. Um. But the tally was only like
(22:03):
five and I think one of those was a French word.
So yeah, so we were doing great. It's Andrew and
I are gonna have to battle it out. Is he
win because he does the lower one? Andrew bet three times?
That would mess it up? Andy butt eight, I bet
like twenty yea fight. Yeah, we made it through. We
did um and thanks to both of them for emailing us.
(22:27):
If you would like to email us, you can our
emails hello at saverorpod dot com. Although we've been having
a few problems with our email lately. It's it's a
it's a known quantity. We're working it through. If there's
something that you absolutely need to get to us via email,
then the safe bet email address is food stuff at
how stuff works dot com. Hopefully we think, we think,
(22:51):
but people are working on it and also nice assured
we will answer. Yes, the emails are there there, we
just can't see them. Yeah. Uh. Anyway, we're also on
social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram at savor pod in all of those places, we
do hope to hear from you. Savor is a production
(23:12):
of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio. You can visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thank you, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of I Heart Radio
and Stuff Media. I'm Anny Rees and I'm Lauren vocal Baum,
and today we're talking about the Cypurna. Yes, and we're
going to do our best pronunciation wise. Yes, oh Portuguese.
It's it's so difficult. Well, I mean, I'm sure for us, Yes,
it's so different. I mean right right, And I was
thinking about it. And this episode is going to premiere.
(00:29):
I don't know when you're going to be listening to it,
but it's going to come out on Friday, the first
Friday for a long time to have a full moon.
And we have curached ourselves with a difficult to pronounce episode.
But it's about something wonderful. It is. It is about
a delightful, delightful cocktail. It is. I've had a few
in my day, not not too many, but a few.
(00:51):
And the first time I had one, I was in
prou and there is a few blocks from where I
live that has them. It was the first place I
went to when I moved in. But I think that
those are they're much sweeter than what they normally are.
I think, yeah, the sugar involved is meant to be
relatively minimal. Yeah, those are very very sweet. I mean similarly,
(01:12):
I've had mohitoes that range anywhere from like kind of
like bracing to just syrup. So it's a bit of
a cabin it is. It is um. But this brings
us to our question what is it Well. A caperna
(01:34):
is a cocktail made simply with lime, wedges and sugar
muddled together, then topped with ice and cashasa, which is
this liquor distilled from sugarcane juice. The cashassa used is
often unaged, clear and clean tasting, sort of like a
white rum um. The result is a drink that's sweet
and tart and strong um, possibly with hints of other
(01:55):
flavors from the booze. And Yeah, the thing about cashasa
is that it's not quite like rum um. Rum is
distilled from molasses, which is a sweet and rich and
sticky byproduct of the sugar refining industry. Becaushasa is closer
to what we'd call rum agricole um, because again it's
distilled for the actual juice of the sugar cane. And
(02:16):
we got to visit a cane farm and agricol distillery
on Oahu when we were out in Hawaii Um. The
brand name's Cohana. It was so good and that the
tasting was really i opening because they gave us some
some like fresh cane juice when we first walked in um.
And the the products that they are making from it
are so interesting and complex, like the flavors ranged from
(02:40):
like grassy to fruity, too spicy to sort of funky
in the unaged forms, and then tended towards like rich
and warm and spicy or or nutty if it had
been aged in wood barrels. I had never tried anything
quite like it. So good, It was so good and
you can't get a air Yeah, um, rum rum agricult. Yeah,
(03:02):
be on the lookout for it um or yes um
because yes, Cashassa specifically can be aged in some like
twenty to thirty different kinds of wood, including stuff that
we definitely don't see booze being aged in here in
the United States, like a like Brazilian zebra wood supposed
Leland's just a lovely like like cinnamon nutcrunch kind of
(03:23):
flavor to it. I'm into that right. There are a
couple other names for cashassa, by the way, like a
pinga or aguar dente by Brazilian law and according to
the International Bar Tenders Association, a cheekpurna is only cashassa,
sugar and lime. All variations thereof, specifically fruit wise, must
be specified in the name, like strawberry cypurna. For example,
(03:47):
it translates to little countryside drink or country little girl,
depending on the translation you find. It is Brazil's national drink,
the cappy kype I suppose the unofficial drink of the
twenty seen Olympics. Nineteen sixty Brazilian folklorist Osvaldo Ogier had
over six fifty names for kishasa, including zunzum, also Battita, paulista,
(04:11):
a k a sal pallo shake, Kasa caprina kshasa prepared
hillbilly style types. There are a lot of different types.
Many bars of Brazil offers three types of caprinia, Basic,
especial and lukso, depending on the price quality of the
cashassa brand used. Also fairly common to see a Kaprioska,
a version made with vodka and also with basic especial
(04:35):
and looks so tears. There's also the Kyprissima, made with
white rum. Um Sake is another popular substitute, but I
didn't find a cutesie name for one spoke. Well, let
it write in and let us listeners. Brazil has just
so many types of fruit, all of which can and
probably have been muddled into this cocktail. A whole bunch
of different spices can go into the drink as well.
(04:57):
Another thing that can vary the type of line. The
predominant one is lima tahti. That's the tart line that
we know as a Tahitian lime or a Persian lime.
But confusingly, a lime called lima to persia is a
close second, which is a sweet lime with a yellow
skin that we would know as a Palestinian or Indian lime. Yeah. Limao,
(05:21):
by the way, is the word for both lemon and
lime and Portuguese. I'm like, y'all get your sitters together.
Maybe it's like, you know what, there's a lot of
there's a lot of qualifiers that go into their like
these sure locational names. Anyway, when it comes to nutrition,
(05:42):
drink responsibly. Yes, I will say that as cocktails go,
this is a relatively light one with minimal sweeteners, no
heavy cream or eggs in there. So yeah, drink responsibly
when it comes to numbers from alcohol in Latin America,
a social and cultural history. Cashassa is the quote third
(06:03):
most produced distilled drink in the world as of two
thousand eight. And I've seen varying numbers on this, but
but as of two thousand and eight there were at
least five thousand distilleries making cashassa. It was some twelve thousand, yeah,
m hm uh. And in terms of the amount of
its amount of it that's produced, I've also seen conflicting
(06:26):
numbers up to like one point five billion leaders but
um anywhere from like one billion to two billion, which
is a widespread of numbers. Um. But most of that
is sold in Brazil, and like less than a percent
of it um is exported. Mostly it's exported to Germany. Huh,
(06:50):
all right, yeah, international cashass today is June twelve, and
Brazil's oh my goodness, we're doing something on time. Brazil
dia nacion no date cashasa is September. Were totally meant
to do that, Yes, sure, ye, perfect, and we nailed it. Um.
(07:14):
It is pretty new to the United States, though it
had to be labeled Brazilian rum to be imported until
a lot of other things I read from people who
are in the know. When it comes to Kashasa said, unfortunately,
a lot of Americans have been exposed to lower quality. Yeah,
so perhaps experiences have not been good with it. Yes, yes,
(07:38):
the kind of like more Bernie aggressive industrial kshasa and
um Whereas some of the or a lot of the
stuff that's being made there now is being made by
these independent producers who are doing these lovely um uh,
personalized things. Hence part of the difficulty with the numbers,
I think, because some of them are sort of doing
(07:59):
their own things out in the quoked middle of nowhere
and not really you know, distributing or anything but anywhere. Anyway,
that about brings us to some history, it does, But
first it brings us to a quick word from our sponsor,
(08:20):
and we're back, Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Another
cocktail hour. Another messy history. That's our tradition. We didn't
make the rules, but that's that's that's them's the rules.
That's what they say. That is historians agree it probably
originated in Paraite sal Paolo, Brazil, kind of in that area.
(08:41):
That's about all they agree on. And even that it's
kind of tenuous. It is um but okay, let's let's
trace all of the ingredients for this into Brazil. So
limes probably came into the America's earliest in a Columbus.
He brought citrus seeds with him, including lines probably again
(09:03):
probably yeah, either way, citrus trees were being grown and
what's now Brazil by the Portuguese by about fifteen forty. Meanwhile,
Um the Portuguese started planting sugarcane around fifteen sixteen, and
Brazil was the first place in the Americas where sugar
was produced commercially starting in fifteen fifty, with with mills
(09:24):
um springing up along the coast of the Atlantic. Because
shassa has been in Brazil since the fift hundreds, Brazil
was making alcohol from sugarcane for longer than just about
anyone very soon after the Portuguese first planted there. It's
thought that the word um cashassa was the name that
enslaved Africans working in these sugar mills gave to um,
(09:45):
to the layer of foam that forms at the at
the top of pots when sugarcane juice is boiled down
at the start of the refining process. Um the phone
was considered a waste product, but some of these enslaved
people began collecting and fermenting it, or so the story
goes on. Distillers were up and running by five three
(10:05):
hundred forty nine. By sixte At first, casa was viewed
as a drink for the country folk and mostly enslaved workers.
No self respecting city folk would be caught with it
aside for aside from medicinal uses of course, um and
yeah that those upper classes would have been consuming European
drinks like wines and ports. It was considered a basic
(10:29):
ration for the enslaved through the sixteen and seventeen hundreds,
though it faced a number of prohibition efforts from the
Portuguese government in attempts to curb drunkenness and also to
better control the economy. Um. One of those efforts was
passed into law on June twelfth, seventeen forty four, which
is now International Cashasday. Eventually, as the upper and middle
(10:52):
classes of Brazil moved towards overthrowing the Portuguese monarchy and
declaring independence in the early eighteen hundreds, cashassa was embraced
as this like local and patriotic beverage by those classes,
and then the large scale availability of ice um would
have been the last ingredient to kind of fall into place.
(11:13):
The North American ice trade started coming to Brazil in
the mid eighteen hundreds. You can see our episode Savor
on Ice from January of nineteen for for more about
the ice trade. Every now and then, I'm just like
the title, that's so funny. That's that's you can and
(11:34):
y'all have any to thank for those titles or to curse,
depending on your taste. So now we have all the ingredients.
What about the cocktail? Several possibilities. Possibility one, it was
concocted as a symptom reliever for Spanish flu towards the
end of World War One, or perhaps earlier in the
nineteenth century. The original recipe was certainly packed with those
(11:56):
medicinal ingredients green lemon, honey, and garlic at the time,
and green lemon here probably meant lime. One of the
French words for limes citrone vair. So that's that's what
I suspect. Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, Perhaps this drink was
invented earlier elsewhere, but took place in the port city
(12:18):
of South Polo. A historian from Parade found a document
dating back to eighteen fifty six with a mention of
this cocktail and its potential to stave off cholera. Quote
because of the concern with colra and water. By necessity,
we began mixing augrdente with water, sugar and limes because
it was prohibited to drink straight water. H huh possibility
(12:39):
to sailors trying to ward off scurvy adopted kshata instead
of rum as their spirit of choice to add their
sitters to when arriving to Brazil. Or maybe it was
a spirit of necessity. Um, I feel like half of
our cocktails are scurvy based. Yep, yep. Lime plus booze
was a common scurvy preventative by the eighteen fifties, and
you can hear more about that in our episode on
(13:01):
Lime or our episode on the Gin and Tonic or
whiskey Sour or whiskey sour. That's right, feel like most
of our cocktail hours or well, I didn't realize how
terrible it was. I recently read an article about just
exactly what. Oh yeah, it's not nice. That is no
wonder anyway. Um, it was believed to help with not
(13:24):
just scurvy and the Spanish flu but everything ranging from
bad luck to yes, cholera Okay, possibility three. Maybe it
was a party drink. Yes, created to show off at
parties and salpallo. It was a way to showcase the
ingredients of the country. Yeah again as as a as
a kind of national pride sort of thing. Possibility for
(13:48):
slave traders drink this mixture as a scurvy prevention on
the way back to Portugal from Brazil. Or possibility five.
Farmers created it to use up their extra CASHASA. At
some point someone got the bright idea to remove the
garlic and honey and balance the sweetness of the line
with a bit of sugar. I would imagine this is
when we're moving away from medicinal Two more fun, more
(14:12):
fun times. Yes. Yes. During the nineteen two Modern Art
Week and international event, Brazil featured the capperna. However, it
came to be European Tour has played a huge hand
in popularizing it in the nineteen seventies, and soon it
was known around the globe. Starting around the turn of
the twenty one century, UM more small artisan cashassa distilleries
(14:34):
started opening up in Brazil, and UH larger brands started
producing more high end specialty cashassas as well. In two
thousand three, the Cana was officially named Brazil's national drink
and defined as this combination of lime, sugar and cashassa
with an alcohol content of fifteen to thirty six and
without the quote addition of any substance that alters the
(14:58):
natural sensorial character juristics since sorial characteristics don't hear that
free tossed about too often only in translation um in
two thousand and six, and I suspect that this was
related to Brazil's kind of campaign to get cashassa recognized
by the United States and the European Union, which I've
(15:19):
been until then had been labeling it as Brazilian rum Um.
This group of researchers demonstrated that you can definitely tell
RUMs and cashasas apart based on the differences in the
flavor compounds contained in each like under like like spectromty
like yeah yeah. Then in Casa, producer Leblan launched the
(15:44):
Save the Cyburnia campaign, claiming that seven of ten Cybrina
is served do not contain cashassa. Yeah they were um,
they're looking to to bring awareness to the spirit. The
campaign included a petition to Unicode to create Kuyperna emoji
and I love it. What I just feel like I
(16:04):
wouldn't be able to differentiate it from any other similarly
colored cocktail. But maybe that's I need to learn my emojis. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's a it's a very distinct like it's a
little little like high ball glass with two little, two
little wedges of lime and it in some ice cubes. Okay. Yeah.
I read a lot of articles about the type of
(16:25):
ice you should use, and then I read some articles
about not only the glass you should serve it in,
but the glass you should make it in, because some
people were saying you should make it in one and
then pour it in another, and that depends on what
ice you're using. Oh yeah, and I I read a
number of things about about like straining controversies and oh yeah,
(16:48):
what a world. Um at any rate, in the United
States finally recognized Cashasa as this specifically Brazilian product um
and no longer required it to be labeled rum um.
The recognition did come with the stipulation that Brazil needed
to start classifying Bourbon and Tennessee whiskeys as being specifically
(17:10):
American products love that. Yeah. Uh but yeah, that's that's
about what we have to say about the Caprinia. It's
a there's so much more about Casasa out there that
I definitely want to do a whole episode on it
(17:31):
at some point. There's a lot of um, all of
this really fascinating UM nitty gritty historical stuff that goes
into um, how it was being used in the slave trade.
It became like quite a big part of what the
Portuguese were trading to people in Africa in exchange for humans.
Um and uh so depressing and um and and really
(17:57):
um economically interesting history. Yeah, we will return to that,
not today, not today. Uh. We do have a tiny
bit more for you in this episode, but first we've
got one more quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(18:24):
and we're back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you, and
we're back with listener cheers, cheers. Amanda wrote, and while
it's not food related, really, I still have to tell
you about the time I visited the West Edmonton Mall
when I was seven. We were on a road trip
passing through and the family is staying with said it
was a musty. At the time, it was the largest
(18:45):
mall in the world. It had an amusement park with
a roller coaster and indoor water park. In the water
park there is an artificial beach with sand and machine
made waves. You can see it from the outside through windows,
and I remember standing with my nose us to the
glass in awe. I also remember there being a glass
enclosure with peacocks. Wow. Sadly, my mom said no, it
(19:08):
isn't going to either park, but all these years later,
I still remember how impressive it was. Now about fairy tales,
you have asked several times for food related fairy tale suggestions,
if you've not already read them, I would like to
suggest three may Peaches, which is French, and Princess fur Ball.
I know the last one doesn't sound like it has
to do with food, but trust me, the princess has
mad cooking skills or in some version she straight up
(19:30):
has magic spices. Yes, thank you for the fairy tale recommendations.
I've been thinking about. We need to bring that back. Yeah. Yeah,
I suspect that Alice in Wonderland is going to be
our next selection. Yes, but yeah, please keep sending the suggestions.
And this made me think of um, I've never been
(19:50):
to them. All of America. But I've seen the Mary
Kate Nashley Okay, and I still think about this day
and you use the cowork of ours. A friend of
ours us we were talking about it and we were
both like, I know, there's a roller coaster in there.
That's about all I know. Yeah. Maybe maybe one day,
maybe that will be our next field trip. Uh Kirk wrote,
(20:13):
thanks for the Fish and Chips podcast. I do fancy
myself a bit of an expert on what constitutes good
fish and chips, having grown up with the best fish
and chip in the world, I haven't every time I
see it on a menu, and I've tried it from
Essex to Bengaluru, and I can say with certainty you
have not had the best fish and chips until you
have been to St. John's in the surrounding area in
(20:33):
Newfoundland and had proper fish and chips and chosen which
shop is your favorite? You see in St John's fish
and chip shops are akin to religion and politics and
equally divisive. While mushy peas are an option, but more
common are dressing and gravy with fried onions. Some shops
even offer fish that was caught that morning for the
(20:54):
ultimate freshness. You see. Cod is king in Newfoundland. It
was a foundation for our economy for over five years.
It's the reason England had fish and chips and an
empire for that matter. Currently, I am part of the
great Newfoundland diaspora living in Strange Lands, Upper Canada, and
any trip home is not complete without a feed of
fish and chips. I hope you have the chance to
(21:17):
visit God's country and try it yourselves. You should also
try fish and brewis, which is salt cod cooked with
hardtack and scrunchions. Newfoundland is one of the few places
where you can still get hard tack. And I'm not
going to tell you what scrunchions are. Love it mystery intrigued.
He also said they're puffins there, so oh man, Yeah,
(21:40):
well that sounds great. I love these hard cells. Yeah
you should go next. Yeah. Also, I apologize if I
if I butchered any of that. I'm so American. We
actually took itally of how many times we mispronounced things
this episode. It was a bit lower than I thought
I was going to be. Yeah. I thought that I
was going to mess up Cashasa like a lot more
than I did. Um. But the tally was only like
(22:03):
five and I think one of those was a French word.
So yeah, so we were doing great. It's Andrew and
I are gonna have to battle it out. Is he
win because he does the lower one? Andrew bet three times?
That would mess it up? Andy butt eight, I bet
like twenty yea fight. Yeah, we made it through. We
did um and thanks to both of them for emailing us.
(22:27):
If you would like to email us, you can our
emails hello at saverorpod dot com. Although we've been having
a few problems with our email lately. It's it's a
it's a known quantity. We're working it through. If there's
something that you absolutely need to get to us via email,
then the safe bet email address is food stuff at
how stuff works dot com. Hopefully we think, we think,
(22:51):
but people are working on it and also nice assured
we will answer. Yes, the emails are there there, we
just can't see them. Yeah. Uh. Anyway, we're also on
social media. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and
Instagram at savor pod in all of those places, we
do hope to hear from you. Savor is a production
(23:12):
of I Heart Radio and Stuff Media. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio. You can visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thank you, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
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