Monday, September 14, 2009

the scotch cringe

2 oz Laphroaig 10 Year (Famous Grouse)
3/4 oz Lime Juice
3/4 oz Simple Syrup
1 Whole Egg
2 chunk Watermelon

Dry shake the egg with the lime juice. Add the remaining ingredients and briefly muddle the watermelon. Add ice, shake, and strain into a collins glass filled with fresh ice.

Last night, we made good use of the watermelon we had just bought to mix a drink from the Rogue Cocktails book called the Scotch Cringe (a/k/a the "Lavender Cadaver"). It might have been the nickname that grabbed me or perhaps the following description: "This drink was once described by a group of medical students as tasting like a morgue." Looking over the ingredients, it seemed like it could be delicious despite the gross construal so I decided to make a pair of them for um, scientific purposes.

"Mmm... tasty cadavers!" was Andrea's response. The Scotch Cringe was rich, thick, and smokey with a lot of watermelon flavor to it (almost a Jolly Rancher watermelon note). The drink was deceptively summery, and the egg and lime did a decent job to balance off the half jigger of simple syrup. Despite its sweetmeat hue and chunky pink bits floating about, the drink did not taste gross at all. Since our Scotch selection is severely lacking, we used a blended Scotch -- perhaps the intended Laphroaig would have added some extra morgue notes to the drink? Or perhaps the medical students had an off egg experience that night? Regardless, just given the name and appearance, the Scotch Cringe would make for a wonderful highball to toast the rapidly approaching Halloween season!

2 comments:

Andrea (MaoMaoChong de Mama) said...

Cool blog! My husband just got back from a trip selling our wine (Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard and Quinta Cruz) in New York, and he visited PDT along with several other bars and that's how I stumbled across your blog. There are several drinks on here I'm going to have him make me - Yum! Despite (because of?) making wine and having ample amounts of that by way of trades, he's gotten very into making cocktails! Yum! But I sure don't need the extra calories, especially in such a deceptive form.

Anyway, about this post: yes, the Laphroaig would have definitely added the morgue flavor. It has been described as "burnt bandaids" fairly often, and the bandaids part seems true to me. I like Scotch (he was into that before cocktails), but I do NOT like Laphroaig. In fact their own slogan is "Love it or hate it," so they know. I'd almost suggest trying this drink with the Laphroaig, jsut for the experience, but certainly not if you have to buy a bottle to do so. And despite your liking of it, I don't think I'll spend my drink calories on this one.

Thanks for the reading and the ideas!
(another) Andrea

frederic said...

Thanks for writing! Since I wrote that 2 1/2 years ago, we have expanded our Scotch collection and have Laphroaig 10; however, we have no revisted the drink. Yes, Laphroaig is rather funky which is why it was still allowed in during Prohibition -- they figured it could only be used for medicinal purposes.