The Monkey Gland

The Monkey Gland dates from the 1920s, when a surgeon named Serge Voronoff convinced a good portion of Europe that grafting monkey testicle tissue onto humans was the road to eternal vigor. It was not. The surgery has been, correctly, abandoned. The cocktail, named in its honor by a Harry's Bar bartender with either a sense of humor or none at all, survived.

It's gin, orange juice, and grenadine, which sounds like brunch until the absinthe and the grenadine start arguing about who gets to be the interesting part of this drink. Neither wins outright, which is the whole appeal.

Use fresh orange juice if you can. The bottled stuff is fine for emergencies, but this drink has so few ingredients that each one is doing a lot of work, and asking watery citrus concentrate to carry a quarter of the glass is not a job I'd wish on it.

A drink with this history has earned the right to be a little ridiculous. It has also, somehow, earned the right to be genuinely good, which is the part nobody saw coming in 1923 and nobody sees coming now.