Monster in a Glass

When it comes to consistency, the Horse’s Neck cocktail has a whole big lack of it. This cocktail started off with no booze in it, and then added really any booze you had on hand. As time went on, it was sometimes alcoholic, sometimes not. Sometimes it had alternate names like Horse’s Neck Highball, Stiff Horse’s Neck, Horse’s Neck with a Kick, or even Horse’s Collar.

The only real consistency was that it had ginger ale in it, and a lemon peel in it. If you order one nowadays, the end of the peel is supposed to hang outside of the glass, to mimic a horse’s head hanging over a fence. Or maybe not, since the original recipe didn’t call for that. And wouldn’t it be called a Horse’s Head if that were the case?

Join us as we try to figure out why this confusing concoction was all over the place. We also discuss this drink’s association with the Royal Navy, and the marketing of it to ladies and teenagers!

The Bloody Mary is another one of those cocktails that people have been fighting over for nearly a century.  Because of its age and popularity it surely is a classic, but I think part of its popularity has been earned by its shock value. I think it's the kind of drink people suggest to elicit "ewws" but because it's actually good, it has stuck around as more than just a joke. Capping it off with a name deserving of a horror show, you have a classic with some staying power. The drink has two origin stories.  One comes from the ever popular Harry's New York Bar in Paris as yet another Lost Generation cocktail, but not from Harry, but one of the bartenders there, Fernando Petiot, made it at the suggestion of one of the regulars, Roy Barton. The other story is much more detailed involving a vaudevillian, a Mr. George Jessel.  After an evening of binge champagne drinking in 1927 he requested a pick me up from the bartender at the bar he landed at in the morning. The bartender whipped this up for him as a friend, Mary, still dressed in her evening gown from the previous night joined him. She proceeded to spill it down her front, and so the drink was christened. These two tales are understood as the best contenders for the origin of the Bloody Mary. What many don't realize is that Mr. Petiot admitted long ago that Jessel was the first to put vodka and tomato juice together...Petiot dressed it up, added salt, pepper, and spice and made it the drink that people love to hang over at brunch around the world today.

At the Brixton, Michael made us a couple of Bloody Marys to demonstrate a little of what they do there to change it up a bit.  In one he added a little Guinness and in another he added a little red wine.  Both were hits with most of us, though each had his or her favorite. Jeremy and myself stood out as the ones who just don't do Bloody Marys...It's the tomato juice. Neither of us like to drink tomatoes, so we're just not going to like Bloody Marys...really ever. Kevin and Eric are avowed Bloody Mary fans and they appreciated the drinks though it was noted that having the celery salt mixed right in was preferable to just rimming the glass (though I have to admit I liked the less salty one more). Nicole enjoyed them as well, liking how the red wine in the one version smoothed it out a little. As much as I dislike these drinks, I truly appreciate what they are, the tradition and the history, and the stories are interesting and fun...a real slice of life in that time period.

The Singapore Sling has a bit of a tricky history to piece out. Most recipes nowadays have pineapple juice, and attribute the Singapore Sling recipe to the Raffles Hotel in 1915. While some evidence points in that general direction, it is hard to confirm. What muddies the waters is changing ingredients from reference to reference, bouncing between simple gin sling-based recipes to something that resembles a tropical drink. For additional confusion, sometimes it is a Singapore Sling, sometimes a Singapore Gin Sling, sometimes a Straits Sling. And just for fun the ingredients for a Singapore Sling in one book may be the same as the ingredients as a Straits Sling in another, with a Singapore Sling right alongside, of course with different ingredients.

In this episode we try to sort out the Singapore Sling story and how it got to be such a recognizable cocktail. We take a look at the origins of gin slings, Western influences that might have brought it to Southeast Asia, and British colonial rule a long way from the U.K.

The recipe is:

The story of the Algonquin Cocktail is truly a fascinating, confusing, and possibly widely misattributed one. I had heard this story before and loved learning about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Roundtable.   In 1919 a group of writers, actors and intellectuals began to frequent the Algonquin for lunch every day.  They were known as the Algonquin Round Table or later, The Vicious Circle.  These artists were the intellectual elite of their day.  They became a social group that partied together in the evening and even vacationed together.  They were sharp, clever and full of interesting ideas and banter, but as Dorothy Parker admitted many years later there wasn’t a whole lot of substance.  Groucho Marx refused to have anything to do with them; he considered them too catty to bother with.  They lasted for 10 years as social force in New York before the group faded away as each member chose new paths for their lives.  The Vicious Circle is generally considered disbanded by 1929. The problems started popping up when I learned that the Algonquin hotel did not serve alcohol, and in fact, the general manager, Frank Case, was a staunch prohibitionist prior to prohibition and didn't serve alcohol even before it was made illegal. The big question is where were these known lushes drinking?  And why was a cocktail given the name of a dry hotel?  This always struck me wrong. Jason Kruse likewise became befuddled for the same reasons as he researched this drink.  But as he looked into the history, not only did this story not add up, but he discovered intriguing inconsistencies with the recipe.  As it turns out, there is an older version of this cocktail made with wormwood and Holland gin.  The commonly accepted version of the drink doesn't appear until later at which point there is a dramatic switch. Jason proposed an alternate origin story for the Algonquin having nothing to do with the hotel...in fact, the first version of the cocktail precedes the opening of the hotel...the cocktail CAN'T be named after the hotel or the catty gang of literati. "But wait" you say, "maybe the first Algonquin Cocktail is not related at all to the second. Drinks get the same name all of the time without being related."  That's true, but that usually happens with easy popular words.  Also, Jason suggested an alternate story.  If the original recipe called for Holland gin...often that gin is stored in barrels and it acquires a little bit of brownish color...kind of like whiskey.  Also, according to David Wondrich, an 1809 recipe for Holland gin using rye as the base for the spirit was commonly made in the New York region, a product now being bottled by New York Distilling Company called Chief Gowanus Holland gin.  Being possibly a rye spirit, being possibly brown in color, it makes sense the Holland gin might have been swapped with rye whiskey at some point.  As for the wormwood, vermouth, derived from wermuot, meaning wormwood in old German, originally had wormwood until 1915 when wormwood was made illegal.  We suspect that it was easy to keep with the vermouth sans wormwood and so the connection to wormwood falls away as well.  Pineapple was all the rage in the period...I don't think we need an explanation for it.  So we can see how one cocktail possibly evolved into another.  Now all we need is an explanation for the name to finish off the story. Algonquin is a regional dialect of Native Americans (I spoke with my friend @KristenDBurton for some insights) and a tribe (in Canada).  Jason found evidence that wormwood was used by Native Americans as a stomach tonic, so he speculated that's how wormwood became associated with them (and then therefore the cocktail), but Kristen said the Dutch would have been using wormwood the same way as well.  I am curious if the connection can be found in the name of the Chief Gowanus Holland gin.  Why does gin carry the name of a New England Native American chief?  We can't make the connection.  If any of our readers or listeners can, please share your ideas or theories.  Like I said, if this represents one cocktail evolving over time, then it is not named after the Algonquin Hotel, all we need to do is relate Native Americans somehow to gin or wormwood and we have the whole story. In any case, here’s the cocktail:

This was a really well loved cocktail.  All of us enjoyed it, even those of us who aren't big whiskey drinkers.  It blended well with none of the ingredients overpowering the others.  I thought it tasted kind of like coconut but I'm willing to assent to the idea that my brain tasted pineapple and then wanted a pina colada. All in all, it's a good, simple drink that seemingly has a fantastic story that only gets more interesting if you consider that it might not be what it seems. PS I just checked and saw that the Algonquin Hotel has Algonquin cocktails on their menu.  I hope they aren't pissed.