The Honolulu Cocktail No. 1 first turns up in print on page 83 of Harry Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book — right next to a completely different drink also called Honolulu, numbered No. 2, built from equal parts gin, maraschino, and Bénédictine. That second recipe traces further back to Hugo Ensslin's 1917 Recipes for Mixed Drinks, where it appears unnumbered. No. 1, the juice-forward gin sour this page follows, doesn't show up anywhere earlier that we could find — it reads as original to Craddock's book, or at least as far back as the paper trail goes. The "Honolulu" name is aspirational rather than geographic: it was printed three years before Don the Beachcomber opened the bar that would actually launch Polynesian-themed drinking in America.
Two drinks, one name, one page. Craddock never explained why — he just printed both and let the bar sort it out.
Two Honolulus, One Page
Craddock's 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book lists Honolulu No. 1 as a dash-built gin sour — Angostura bitters, orange juice, pineapple juice, and lemon juice, each just a dash, poured over "1 glass dry gin" with a little powdered sugar. Directly below it sits No. 2: gin, maraschino, and Bénédictine in equal thirds, a recipe Ensslin had already published in 1917 under the plain name "Honolulu Cocktail." Whether Craddock renumbered an existing drink or coined a new one and borrowed the name is not documented in either book — he simply ran both.
We looked for an earlier appearance of the No. 1 formula specifically and didn't find one. That's a real gap, not a settled fact we're glossing over: treat this as a drink with a solid first-print citation (Savoy, 1930, p.83) but no confirmed inventor or earlier source.
The Spec
This build keeps Craddock's architecture — mostly gin, brightened by a trio of citrus and tropical juices rather than one — but turns his dashes into measured fractions so the fruit actually registers in the glass.
From glass-and-dashes to measured ounces
Craddock's original called for a full "glass" of dry gin cut with mere dashes of juice — proportions built for a much boozier 1930s palate that would taste almost straight today. This build follows the same gin-forward shape but scales the juices from dashes up into real fractions, the same rebalancing every modern reprint of this recipe leans on to make it drinkable rather than punishing.
Three juices, not one
Orange brings sweetness and aromatics, pineapple brings the tropical funk that gives the drink its name-brand flavor, and lemon supplies the backbone acidity that keeps the other two from turning the drink into juice with gin in it. Drop any one and it stops tasting like this specific cocktail.
Bottom Line
No. 1 is the gin-and-tropical-juice half of a pair Craddock never bothered to reconcile — bright, citrus-forward, and easy to drink. If you want the stranger sibling, No. 2's equal-parts gin, maraschino, and Bénédictine is worth trying too; they share a name and nothing else.