Tart, orange, mint
Complex and bright, pair this fresh-tasting gin cocktail with chilled melon soup or a salad topped with goat cheese.
A drink inspired by early experiments in “male enhancement”? Harry McElhone, proprietor of the famed Harry’s Bar in Paris, turned this cocktail into a Prohibition-era phenom. The name, like so many cocktails of this time, riffs off front page news, in this case the story of a French surgeon who performed a monkey-to-millionaire gonad transplant. The cocktail made such a splash that the Washington Post ran the recipe as a special cable dispatch. Published versions often call for Pastis or Benedictine, but the original calls for absinthe; we like to bow to the eunuch monkeys and do the same.
2 ounces (60 ml) gin (Beefeater)
1 ounce (30 ml) fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon grenadine (page 244)
Absinthe, to rinse the glass
Orange twist, for garnish
Rinse a chilled coupe glass with absinthe. Shake remaining ingredients with ice and strain into the prepared glass. Garnish with an orange twist resting on the rim.