Juicy Secrets

“When a real southern epicure wants a particularly enticing drink he takes the heart of the luscious melon, puts it in a tall glass, pours rum over it, adds a dash of lemon juice and a quantity of ice, and there you are!”

There you are, indeed. These straightforward directions for making a watermelon cocktail date to a 1909 newspaper column. Perfect? Perhaps. It’s simple and sublimely refreshing. Too simple? Maybe. Drinkers today want layers—cocktails able to converse in a half dozen languages. Yet the uncanny efficiency of watermelon to quench persists, as the following trio of recipes assure us. Watermelon, it turns out, speaks a universal language, easily understood by