The East India No. 3 is Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron's third numbered take on the East India Cocktail, added when he revised his Bartender's Guide in 1972 — it doesn't appear in the original 1947 edition, which only ran to East India No. 1 and No. 2. The name itself is older than tiki: 19th- and early-20th-century "East India" cocktails were gin- or brandy-based, dry, stirred drinks tied loosely to the East India trading routes, closer in spirit to a Savoy-era classic than to a Polynesian bar menu. Bergeron's version keeps the brandy base but works in a barspoon of aged Jamaican rum, dry curaçao, and pineapple juice — and it's specifically this rum-spiked variation that shows up on tiki lists today, not the older, rum-free cocktail it borrows its name from.
A brandy sour that borrowed a teaspoon of rum and a splash of the tropics.
The Fourth Cocktail With the Same Name
"East India" as a cocktail name goes back further than tiki does — early-20th-century guides and Savoy-adjacent sources record gin- or brandy-based East India cocktails as dry, stirred, sherry-and-bitters-adjacent drinks. Bergeron's numbered series shares the name and the brandy base, but not much else: his East India recipes, spread across editions of his Bartender's Guide, are shaken, citrus-forward, and built for a Polynesian-themed bar rather than a hotel lounge.
No. 3 specifically is the version that introduces rum into the format, added in the 1972 revised edition. The recipe held up well enough to get reprinted twice more — in Stanley Clisby Jones' 1977 Complete Barguide and again in Jim Meehan's 2011 PDT Cocktail Book — giving it a documented paper trail across three separately published bar guides spanning nearly 40 years.
The Spec
Cognac is the backbone, a bare teaspoon of aged Jamaican rum sits underneath it as a background note, dry curaçao brings orange character without excess sugar, and a half ounce of pineapple juice supplies the tropical lean that puts this on tiki lists at all.
A Teaspoon of Rum, Not a Pour
The rum here is a barspoon-scale float, not a second base spirit — enough to register as funk under the cognac, not enough to make this read as a rum drink. Skip it and you'd have a perfectly good brandy sour; include it and the drink earns its spot on a tiki list.
Dry Curaçao Over Plain Triple Sec
A dry curaçao brings orange-peel bitterness and real depth instead of just sugar, which matters here — cognac and pineapple juice already carry plenty of sweetness on their own, and a plainer triple sec would tip the whole drink saccharine.
Bottom Line
This is Trader Vic's own late-career reworking of an older, non-tiki name, with three separately published bar guides backing up the recipe even if the deeper history behind the original "East India" naming stays murky. Judge it as what it is: a well-documented brandy-and-rum sour with a citrus-forward tiki accent.