Cooking Lesson #736: The Monkey Gland Cocktail

…from the Perspectives’ Happy Hour Bar

How you doin’? Here’s a strange Happy Hour cocktail dating back to Prohibition. I selected the Monkey Gland because it's a great drink, but I also chose it for its back story. Consider serving this one up at your next party, just so you can entertain your guests with a funny historical anecdote.
 
The Monkey Gland is a Prohibition classic, devised at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in the 1920s. The name is a reference to a surgical procedure by Dr. Serge Voronoff. For men with performance issues, Dr. Voronoff offered to implant in them the testicle of a monkey, for "rejuvenation," as he called it. That would make your George very curious indeed.
 
In 2024, if you're an adult male who feels the need for a little, um, assistance in the intimacy department, you reach for one of the blue pill pharmaceuticals you see advertised during football games. In 1928, if you needed a little vavoom in the bedroom, you went to see Dr. Voronoff.
 
So popular was Voronoff's vitality procedure in the 1920s that it inspired the  creation of the Monkey Gland, a cocktail named for the rather sensitive part of an unfortunate simian's anatomy that Voronoff surgically implanted into his eager patients.
 
This is a drink where purchasing the right ingredients makes all the difference. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is essential and a quality grenadine—Stirrings makes a decent one and an authentic absinthe really make the cocktail come together (though a substitute such as Herbsaint, Pernod or Ricard will also suffice).
Did Voronoff's treatment work? No, not really—and one doesn’t have to guess how the castrated monkeys felt about the whole thing. One picture above is worth a thousand words. Fortunately, the cocktail still does the trick and you don’t need to de-ball any monkeys in the making of this cocktail.
 
Prep time:  3 minutes
Yield:  1 cocktail
 
Ingredients
1-1/2 ounces gin
1-1/2 ounces freshly squeezed orange juice
1 teaspoon grenadine
1 teaspoon absinthe
 
Directions

1. Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker and fill with ice.
2. Shake well for 10 seconds and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

 
ChefSecret:  Can’t find a good absinthe? You can use Herbsaint, Pernod or Ricard as a substitute.

Quip of the Day:  Life is like the monkey bars… you have to let go to move forward.
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#Cocktail #MonkeyGlandCocktail #Gin #OJ #OrangeJuice #Grenadine #Absinthe #MarchMadness #Cheers #HappyHour #2024 #T2T #URM #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup  
 
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