The Doctor is Funk

We're going into the realm of Beachbum Berry, and his excellent book Beachbum Berry Remixed. The book abounds with stories and recipes from the original king of tiki, Donn Beach. One of the most important things to remember when reading page after page of his creations is that, by and large, Donn was making this stuff up from whole cloth - certainly he knew the ingredients and flavor set of the Polynesian paradise his establishments evoked, but this was far more about his vision and his bartending skills than any wholesale lifting of native drinks.

One notable exception that proves the point, perhaps, is the Doctor Funk. This was a very real drink from Samoa, from a very real person named Dr. Bernhard Funk. A native of Germany, born in 1844, he migrated to Samoa around 1881 as reputedly the first medical practitioner in Apia (the capital city of Samoa). He was friends with Robert Louis Stevenson, and was his bedside doctor when the author died in 1894 in Samoa.

There are several references to his medical skills in works (including Fanny Stevenson's collection of letters from his husband), but he seems to also have had some impressive cocktail skills. The Doctor Funk was a notorious drink spreading out across the region, and his signature recipe had people waxing prosaic about the drink. My favorite was the quote attributed to Paul Gauguin by a skipper: "'E said Dr. Funk was a bloomin' ass for inventin' a drink that spoiled good Pernod with water." Other contemporaries were far more complimentary of the concoction.

Dr. Funk had a rich life, and even went native enough to marry the daughter of a Samoan chief. He was interested in meteorology, wrote a Samoan-English-German dictionary and medical handbooks, and constructed a recreation center at Lake Lanoto'o. Unfortunately, his deteriorating health drove him back to Germany, where he died in 1911. Friends carried out his last wish: he had a granite stone transported back to Samoa and placed on the shore of Lake Lanoto'o with a memorial service on his behalf. I recommend this thread at Tiki Central for much more (and there is much more) about the good Doctor.

All of this brings us back to the drink that is credited to him (and Donn Beach, in its modern version). The recipes can vary greatly (absinthe vs. pernod, different rums, and so on), but we'll take the advice and recipe as set out by the good Beachbum in the aforementioned book. It's a drink that comes to a remarkably happy balance based on the ingredients; the Pernod offers a distraction from the lime, the pomegranate syrup adds just enough sweet to balance the forward flavors, and the rum...well, you'd never know it was in there. A delightful riff on the usual lime-and-rum tiki flavor set that is a worthy tribute to a very interesting man.

Doctor Funk (from Beachbum Berry Remixed, 2010)

.75 oz. fresh lime juice
.5 oz. pomegranate syrup
1 tsp. Pernod
1.5 oz. light Puerto Rican rum (I use Bacardi white)
1 oz. club soda

Add the first four ingredients to a shaker with plenty of ice. Shake vigorously (a bit of water does this drink no harm). Add the club soda directly to the shaker and then pour the shaker unstrained into a glass.