Strange Sounding Drinks

By Gary & Mardee Regan

Strange Sounding Drinks

When was the last time you had a really good Corpse Reviver? You can’t remember? Okay, how about recalling the most recent decent Monkey Gland that slid down your throat, or maybe you can cast your mind back to that night when you just couldn’t get enough Hop Toads. Still having problems with the memory? Worry not. Although these drinks might sound like they were created by some crazed bartender with a little too much body piercing and an excess of Jägermeister in his or her bloodstream, they were actually popular cocktails prior to Prohibition. And although there’s not a great deal of call for them today, some cocktail fanciers--ourselves among them--refuse to let them die.

Of course, the bar-meisters of yesteryear aren’t the only ones responsible for giving strange names to their creations. The past decade or so has seen drinks such as Roadkill, Liquid Heroin, the Mind Eraser, Surfers on Acid, and the Screaming Nazi being served up at hip bars and nightclubs across the country. Some of these drinks, believe it or not, are actually pretty good, but others are seem to have been created for shock value alone.

The name of a drink is much more important than you might think. We learned our lesson well a few years ago when we created a cocktail that we named The Whisky Ching. Made with single malt scotch and ginger liqueur, the Ching was named for the dynasty that ruled China when ginger liqueur was first created. But nobody wanted to order such a strange-sounding drink, so we went back to the drawing board. The ingredients stayed the same, but the drink was renamed “The Debonair.” And less than a year later it was featured on the cocktail list at New York’s Rainbow Room.

Some of the drinks of yesteryear were named for famous people--the Mary Pickford, and the Charlie Chaplin, for instance, while others were named for customers at the bars where the drinks were created--they might not have been famous, but you could be sure that they were regulars. The Bronx Cocktail, reportedly created at the bar at the old Waldorf-Astoria in New York, was named by a bartender who had recently visited the Bronx Zoo. He is said to have looked up at the sea of customers at the bar as he was presenting the drink, and they reminded him of his trip.

The openings of Broadway plays were often used as an excuse to create new drinks, and at that same bar, according to Albert Stevens Crockett in his book, The Old Waldorf Astoria Bar Book, plays such as The Merry Widow, Peg o' My Heart, and Rob Roy were all celebrated at the mahogany with drinks of the same name. The Rob Roy cocktail might be the only one of that trio to achieve longevity, but we doubt that the bartender at the Waldorf had any idea just how popular his creation would become.

The drink that probably takes the cake for both name and ingredients is one detailed by Phillip Andrew in The Complete Imbiber. Andrew mentions a concoction served in the Australian outback during the mid-nineteenth century called Blow My Skull Off. It contained brandy, rum, cayenne pepper, and opium, and when you think about it, perhaps the name makes some sense.

Corpse Revivers were actually a category of drinks, much like Slings, and Sours, and Fizzes, and after reviewing the surviving four or five recipes for these we can say with surety that the only thing these drinks had in common was that they were sure to jolt the drinker into another dimension.

A Corpse Reviver detailed by Harry Craddock, in The Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930, was accompanied by the notation “To be taken before 11 a.m., or whenever steam and energy are needed.” And after his second recipe for the drink, Craddock mentioned that “four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.” Perhaps our favorite quote about these promissory drinks, though, comes from Edward Hewett and W. F. Axton in their 1983 book, Convivial Dickens: The Drinks of Dickens and His Times. They mention a Corpse Reviver made from maraschino liqueur, brandy, and curaçao, but stated that “one late-Victorian authority advises that if the corpse be a personal friend, he would eliminate the Maraschino.”

You might have heard of the Monkey Gland cocktail if you paid close attention last time you watched the movie Auntie Mame. Young Patrick Dennis, who was fortunate enough to have been reared by the title character--perhaps one the Prohibition era’s most vivacious bon vivants--overheard the drink being mentioned at a cocktail party and wrote it down so that he wouldn’t forget to ask his aunt what it was.

There are actually two versions of the Monkey Gland: One calls for Bénédictine as the fourth ingredient, and the other uses an absinthe substitute, such as Pernod, as a modifier. We prefer the monkey with Bénédictine in his gland, but you might want to try both versions before you make up your mind.

Next time you visit a swank bar or a tony cocktail lounge, you might want to play “stump the bartender” by asking for one of these bizarre-sounding drinks, but you can be almost certain that, no matter how outrageous the cocktail you request, a good bartender will always have a drink up his or her sleeve that sounds even more peculiar. Here are our favorite recipes for some of the drinks mentioned here.

The Monkey Gland Cocktail # 1

3 ounces London dry gin

1 ounce freshly squeezed orange juice

1 tablespoon Bénédictine

1 teaspoon grenadine

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker half full of ice cubes. Shake well to combine and chill. Strain into a chilled Martini glass.

The Monkey Gland Cocktail # 2

3 ounces London dry gin

1 ounce freshly squeezed orange juice

1 tablespoon Pernod, Ricard, or Herbsaint

1 teaspoon grenadine

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker half full of ice cubes. Shake well to combine and chill. Strain into a chilled Martini glass.

The Corpse Reviver

3/4 ounce sweet vermouth

1/2 ounce calvados

1 ounce cognac

Pour all the ingredients into a mixing glass half full of ice cubes. Stir well to combine and chill. Strain into a chilled Martini glass.

The Hop Toad

1 1/2 ounces dark rum

1 ounce apricot brandy

1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lime juice

2 dashes Angostura Bitters

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker half full of ice cubes. Shake well to combine and chill. Strain into a chilled Martini glass.

The Bronx Cocktail

2 ounces London dry gin

1/2 ounce sweet vermouth

1/2 ounce dry vermouth

1 ounce freshly squeezed orange juice

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker half full of ice cubes. Shake well to combine and chill. Strain into a chilled Martini glass.

(Almost) Blow my Skull Off

Note: Since the ingredients listed in the original recipe don't sound too enticing--beside the fact that one of them isn't even legal--we thought that it would be interesting to produce our own version of this drink. Beware--this one carries some weight.

2 ounces cognac

1/2 ounce peach schnapps

1/2 ounce Jägermeister

Pour all the ingredients into a mixing glass half full of ice cubes. Stir well to combine and chill. Strain into a chilled Martini glass.

The Debonair Cocktail

1 ounce Original Canton Delicate Ginger Liqueur

22 ounces Oban or Springbank single malt Scotch

1 lemon twist

Stir over ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish with the lemon twist.

The Russian Quaalude

1 ounce vodka

1 ounce Baileys (no apostrophe) Irish Cream

1 ounce Frangelico

Pour all the ingredients into a cocktail shaker half full of ice cubes. Shake well to combine and chill. Strain into a rock glass filled with fresh ice cubes.