Donn’s secret ingredients #2, #4, and #7 (also #8!) have been a secret for nearly a century. When he created the Zombie in 1934 (with the help of Cora “Sunny” Sund) he used #4.

It was Bob Van Dorpe, first general manager of the Mai-Kai, and former purchasing agent at Don the Beachcomber Chicago, who first unraveled the mystery. He learned that these secret ingredients were produced by Lancaster Inc. headquartered in Los Angeles. The company had been in business since 1884. They were from their Astra Flavors line. He used this knowledge to order those secret ingredients for Mariano Licudine at the Mai-Kai and imparted that knowledge to Mariano to continue ordering long after Bob left the Mai-Kai in 1963.

The Lancaster company closed up shop in the 1980s when the patriarch of the family passed away. Mariano created his own versions of these ingredients and secretly made them himself up to his retirement. He then hand-picked his replacement, Jack Lewis, who became head bartender and began making the ingredients in secret. When Jack retired, he continued to make them for the Mai-Kai, secretly. When he passed away, his daughter made them for a while.

This is the continuity that makes the Mai-Kai the vault of knowledge about Don the Beachcomber, that helped Jeff Berry and me unravel these mysteries. They have been making these recipes to a standard set in the 1930s, and continuing those traditions for over 60 years themselves.

Along with my interviews with Bob Van Dorpe, while researching the Mai-Kai for my book, I was able to look through all of Mariano Licudine’s scrapbooks and recipe books. In those books were shorthand recipes for #2, #4, and #7.

A few years ago, as I started this Donn Beach biography in earnest, I received Donn’s archive of documents from his widow Phoebe Beach. She had cared for it, hauled it around the world, and organized it to some degree for 35 years. In that archive were index cards with shorthand recipes for various secret ingredients, including #2 and #7. There were also letters between Donn and a representative of Lancaster Inc. detailing some of their new Astra Flavors, like Special Blend #10 (Natural Mai-Tai No. 600). It also told how to mix these flavors for use.

These fragments of information allowed me to re-create Donn’s secret ingredients #2, #4, and #7. Jeff “Beachbum” Berry shared some of the original recipes he had that called for these mystery mixers. And I had tried these drinks at the Mai-Kai starting in 2003 which gave me reference points to know how they should taste. With that knowledge I dialed in the flavor intensity and was able to mix the old recipes with my re-created mixers and taste them as they were meant to be for the first time since Don the Beachcomber closed in 1989.

What Jeff Berry published in his books are the substitutions that either the old bartenders told them they used, or that he deduced from their suggestions.

Searching for Don the Beachcomber contains what I call Donn’s canon of drink recipes. When Donn left for WWII service in 1942, new drinks stopped appearing on the menu for decades. A number of recipes on the 1937-1941 menus were discontinued. Some ended perhaps because the particular rum they used was unavailable, and some because they were not popular. So the 1942 menu is Donn’s classics. And a number of them call for these secret ingredients.

I am working with BG Reynolds to produce these cocktail mixers so that you can make a Zombie, Nui Nui, Mystery Gardenia, etc. using the century old secret ingredients for the first time. They should be available before the book is released in the United States. Pending FDA approval, we expect these to be ready to order in winter of 2025/26. Sign up for the mailing list to know when these things are happenng.

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