A coworker of mine pointed out to me recently that  a good chunk of my post on eggnog from Christmas of 2011 consisted of warnings, provisos, and disclaimers about the use of raw egg. Well, I included no such warning on my post on the amazing Pisco Sour a couple of weeks back, although that used only a pretty small amount of egg white. Today, I’m throwing all caution to the proverbial wind with a drink featuring an entire egg — yolk and all. The fact that I had about 9 bird ova in the fridge threatening to go to waste earlier this week is entirely coincidental.

The Egg Sour appears to have originated in print via Jerry Thomas’s classic bartending guide from 1887 — back in the days when refrigeration was rare and penicillin was nonexistent but people knew a tasty and seriously refreshing libation when they tasted one. This drink would also fall easily into the category of a breakfast drink. While I don’t usually go in for that sort of thing, this is certainly a first-rate, and more potent, mimosa alternative.

The Egg Sour

1 ounce cognac or brandy
1 ounce orange curaçao
1/2 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
1 large egg

Combine your cognac, curaçao, lemon juice, whole egg, and sugar, in a cocktail shaker. It’s not entirely necessary but, if you like, you can beat the egg into the rest of the ingredients to aid in the blending process. (It might be more important to observe this step if you’re attempting two Egg Sours at a time.) Next, shake all of your ingredients vigorously without ice in order to ensure a good mix. When you take off the top of your shaker, you should see a nice orangey-white froth. Add ice, shake again very vigorously, and strain into a well-chilled rocks glass. Toast the chicken, or the egg, whichever you think comes first.

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Very observant readers may notice that a couple of ingredients are similar to last week’s drink, the East India House Cocktail, and that’s no coincidence. I took advantage of my newish bottle of curaçao and the lovely, and very free, fifth of Camus Ile de Ré Fine Island Cognac for this drink and it’s a lovely combination. I’m sure other brands of cognac or brandy, such as my value-priced fall back brandy, Reynal, will work extremely nicely here as well, though they may lack a certain touch of class.

As I said above, this is one seriously refreshing but, thanks to the lemon, not quite super-sweet drink. I tried doubling the sugar up to two teaspoons for people with stronger sweettooths, but the result actually tasted less sweet and pleasing to the tongue and had similar results with an entire teaspoon of simple syrup. Interesting.

This is the point in the blog when I usually comment on some cultural or personal aspect of a given beverage, but today’s drink is just tasty in a way that’s totally out of context with much of anything else. Maybe I should have spent more time defending my use of a raw egg.

It’s not exactly a secret around here that I greatly lean towards cocktails as opposed to drinking even truly fine spirits straight. Still, it’s fairly obvious even to me why the best cognacs and other high end brandies are among the most popular of all beverages to enjoy neat. Certainly that applies to the Ile de Ré Fine Island Cognac from the Camus line of fine cognacs with which I was recently blessed by the Powers that Booze.

The PR materials for this brandy emphasize the fact that this particular cognac actually comes from a tiny island off the coast of France which is legally included in the Cognac appellation. My grasp of French geography is nowhere near strong enough for me to know if this is a bit of alcoholic loophole, but no one seems to be complaining about the quality of this cognac which, we are told has a “maritime” feeling and a dash of iodine in its flavor. I’ve never drunk iodine, so I wouldn’t know, but this is definitely about as sippable as any brandy or cognac I’ve enjoyed, and there is a bit of similarity to a good, slightly smokey Scotch I’m sure many will enjoy. It’s also very, very good with an equal part of brandy’s best known significant other, Benedictine.

Nevertheless, while many consider it a sacrilege to make cocktails out of really outstanding cognac, breaking that particular taboo is a big part of the name of the game here at DOTW Central. Even so, we’ve managed to find a very nice cocktail that permits the cognac to be the star of the show, adding a number of sweeteners in small amounts to make for an intriguing and very drinkable whole. While not the equal of the mighty Cognac Sazerac, todays drink is worthy of the status of a very good second-tier classic.

The East India House Cocktail

2 oz cognac (or brandy, if you are an impoverished peon who doesn’t get free booze in the mail)
1 tsp. pineapple juice
1 tsp. superfine sugar
1 tsp. orange curaçao
1 tsp. maraschino liqeuer
1-2 dashes aromatic or Peychaud’s bitters
1 cherry or lemon twist (fairly optional garnish)

Combine the ingredients in a cocktail sugar, stir briefly to dissolve the superfine sugar. Add ice, shake vigorously and strain into a well chilled cocktail glass. If you’re looking for something to toast, you might consider the phylloxera louse. While it’s not typical to salute a vine-eating vermin, this wingless insect was kind enough to leave the Ile de Ré alone back in the 1850s even as it was munching up mainland wine crops. I’m not 100% sure this is relevant to the quality of the island’s cognac today; I just like saluting lice.

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There are several versions of this drink, also sometimes referred to simply as the “East India Cocktail,” so feel free to experiment. Some versions I stumbled upon call for raspberry syrup in place of the pineapple and sugar, which sounds worth a try. Robert Hess of “The Cocktail Spirit,” dispenses with the sugar and just goes with the pineapple juice, though the original recipe called for pineapple syrup (i.e., pineapple juice and sugar). I found his version a bit lacking.

While I’m a fan of all of the ingredients, I’m not certain I’ve found the perfect mix here, so I definitely encourage further experimentation. If anyone out there has better luck with different proportions, I’d love to hear about it. I will say my favorite version featured Angostura bitters and a lemon twist, but every permutation I tried worked fairly well.

For those of you wondering about the name of this week’s drink, the East India House was a real place in London. It was the headquarters of the East India Company, which was crucial in the development of British Imperialism from the Renaissance up through the 19th century, when it was nationalized by the English parliament.

Especially if you’re of Indian or Chinese extraction or just really into human rights, you might consider a drink with a name like that to be a distasteful celebration of oppression. However, another drink I considered making this week was called the “Antebullum Mint Julep” which we are told was a drink commonly enjoyed at pre-Civil War Southern Plantations. What next, I wonder. “The Gestapo Cocktail” or, perhaps less offensively, “The Spanish Inquisition”? as you may be aware, at least that last cocktail has the virtue of being forever unexpected.

You all probably know the one-liner, developed by Groucho Marx and reiterated by Woody Allen in “Annie Hall,” about not wanting to belong to any club that would have the speaker for a member. At this point, I have to admit that I certainly don’t feel like a member of the Pegu Club whether or not they’d have me. Of course, as I’m not a Britisher hanging around Rangoon circa 1920-1930, I wouldn’t expect to be had.

You see, the Pegu Club Cocktail, which apparently was favored by English imperialists messing about in Burma, aka Myanmar, has defeated me. I’ve tried it in a number of permutations and none seem to work. Sure, I still don’t have as much time at present as I’d like to experiment, but no amount of adjusting the proportions of ingredients made this thing come together for me and I have a feeling I could work with it for an entire month and not have much more luck. I’ll give you some leeway and maybe you’ll do better. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with the ingredients separately.

The Pegu Club Cocktail

1 1/2 – 2 ounces gin
1/2 – 1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
1/2 – 1 ounce orange liqueur (Orange Curacao, Triple Sec, Cointreau, etc.)
1-2 dashes Orange Bitters
1-2 dashes Aromatic Bitters (Angostura, etc.)

Combines ingredients in a cocktail shaker and pour into a chilled cocktail shaker. I’d suggest you toast Aung San Suu Kyi but, in my opinion, she deserves a better balanced drink.

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Do I sound bitter? Well, after finding myself underwhelmed by The Maiden’s Prayer a couple of weeks back, I’m just starting to wonder how debilitating Project Empty My Liquor Cabinet Pre Moving is going to continue to be. Well, the good news is that it will be over soon. Drink of the Week Central looks to be moving from Northwest Orange County to the central San Fernando Valley community of Van Nuys within a matter of weeks. Huzzah.

Nevertheless, I will offer one suggestion should you be curious to try this one for yourself: be darn sure not to forget your bitters. As it is, the orange liqueur or the lime juice has a tendency to completely dominate this drink depending on your proportions and never in a particularly good way, no matter what my choice of liqueur seemed to be. (I didn’t, however, try Grand Marnier, so who knows.) Without bitters, as my old buddy Kevin learned one Sunday recently, this can be on freakin’ syrupy drink if you lean on the liqueurish side of the spectrum. Serves me right for effectively celebrating British adventurism so close to the 4th of July.

I guess that’s it. I wonder if any great cocktails were invented in Van Nuys. No doubt we’ll be finding out the answer to that one together.

Last time I was here we were talking about the distinguished history of the Mint Julep and referencing poet John Milton and his rather obscure poem, “Comus” (actually a masque if you want to get technical). Well, you can forget those high flown references this week because we’re getting down and dirty with a classic drink with no such poetic connotations.

Yes, before there was Sex on the Beach and the Screaming Orgasm there was this week’s bluntly named — at least by prohibition era standards, anyways — libation. On the other hand, it’s also probably a lot more appropriate for Mother’s Day weekend than you might care too think, given that cocktails like this are very often the mother of motherhood, if you will.

Between the Sheets

1 ounce brandy or cognac
1 ounce white rum
1 ounce Cointreau or triple sec
1/2 an ounce (or less) fresh squeezed lemon juice

Combine brandy/cognac, rum, lemon juice, and triple sec or Cointreau in a shaker with lots of ice. Shake vigorously and pour into our old friend, the pre-chilled cocktail glass. Shake, put on some Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Beyoncé, or Perry Como (don’t say I don’t give you people some options) and sip sensuously.

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Between the Sheets is an unusual drink not only for its pre-1970s salaciousness, but in that it’s in the small but fascinating family of multiple base spirit cocktails with its rum/brandy combo. Admittedly, however, this is not as much to my personal taste as the Saratoga — which features brandy and rye — from a few weeks back, but it will do.

I tried it several different ways but no clear favorite emerged. The version with inexpensive Bols triple sec was not cloying, as some drinks made with it can be. Using the high end triple sec, Cointreau, added a classy but not super-enthralling note of complex bitterness. Both drinks were fine but when I got a bit more experimental and used orange curacao, which I generally tend to prefer to triple sec, the drink became annoyingly super-sweet. Not sexy at all.

It might not be a huge personal favorite of mine, but I encourage you to give Between the Sheets a shot. It’s a tasty enough drink and a reminder of the healthy, natural activity that brought us all into the world so we can enjoy cocktails and feel guilty about not calling our mother’s enough.

Now, a behind the scenes look at the making of the cocktail we call humanity.

The name of today’s DOTW notwithstanding, this post is not brought to you by the ongoing Republican primary or anything else happening in the world of U.S. or Latin American politics. Instead, we all should thank the good people of Denizen Rum. As always, I appreciate the free bottle but I also appreciate the very reasonable price tag for a fifth which, depending on taxes in your area, might give you enough change from a $20.00 for a Double-Double at In ‘n Out. That’s something because this is tasty stuff, a bit more sophisticated and complex than your standard Bacardi, but in the friendliest way.

On to the cocktail, which was supposedly invented by a Yankee bartender working in Cuba. As per Wayne Curtis, back when little Fidel Castro was not even old enough for his first game of sandlot baseball, Cuba’s somewhat beleaguered President Gerardo Machado, offered one of these to our own el presidente, Republican Calvin Coolidge. Silent Cal remembered that there was this thing called prohibition going on and politely declined.

Nice story, but my first attempt at the drink seemed to explain why El Presidente has become a relic stateside. I found the classical recipes to be sweet to the point of being cloying — and that’s something considering my sweet tooth.

I therefore followed the lead of booze blogger Matt Robold and halved one sweet ingredient, orange curacao, at his suggestion. I liked that version better but I decided to also halve the amount of grenadine he suggested. I found something close to perfection when made with the Denizen rum. This version works slightly less well with plain old Bacardi, but it’s still very nice.

El Presidente (impeached, but not deposed)

1.5 ounces white rum
3/4 ounce dry vermouth
1/4 ounce orange curacao
1/4 teaspoon grenadine
1 orange twist (garnish)

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. If you want to be traditional, stir for a very long time over crushed or cracked ice, or you can do like I do and shake it vigorously, though the drink might not look as pretty if you do. Your call.

Strain into our old friend, the chilled martini/cocktail glass. Fire up original mambo king Perez Prado on the music player of your choice, imagine a day when Cuban cigars are no longer contraband, and have a sip.

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If you want to go more traditional/way sweeter, the classic version offered by cocktail super-historian David Wondrich simply doubles the amount of curacao, and I think 1/4 of a teaspoon is probably the same as the “dash” of grenadine he suggests. I will say that, while I loved my version of the drink, at no point was I able to achieve the orange color the drink has in most (but not all) photos. Mine was more of a pale pinkish hue somewhat as you see above, even with just a tiny amount of very sweet, very red grenadine. It tasted amazing, so I can live with that.

One quick suggestion, if you are determined to go with the full 1/2 ounce of orange sweet stuff, you might do as some have suggested and substitute Cointreau for the curacao. It’s not bad.

You may wonder why I waited so long to take on this most popular of cocktails. I may wonder why. No, it’s not cocktail snobbery, although it’s true that the margarita hasn’t always been admitted to the most exclusive cocktail clubs.

You see, a long time ago, I was a pretty ordinary occasional social drinker who never thought much about cocktails, though I’d sip the occasional vodka martini. (I love olives and figured Ian Fleming knew more about booze than I did). I certainly never thought much one way or the other about margaritas, which I associated with the blended, ultra-sweet, mix laden concoctions that are good for benders at Acapulcos.

Then, one night in Las Vegas, I and a friend were lured into the oddly deserted, and now long gone, Las Vegas branch of the famed Santa Fe eatery, Anasazi, with the promise of free drink with our dinner. I chose a prickly pear margarita on the rocks, because I wondered what prickly pear juice tasted like.

One day, I’ll have to see about recreating that eye-opening concoction, which first taught me that a cocktail could be a lot more than just booze and that blended margaritas were for the birds. The classic margarita made simply, however, is a thing of beauty it itself. Step away from the blender, abandon the mix, and make yourself an amazing drink.

The Margarita

2 ounces tequila (clear/silver)
1 ounce triple sec
1 ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
Salt (extremely necessary garnish to rim the glass)

Salt the rim by wetting the rim of your cocktail glass either with water or a bit of lime juice and placing the rim onto a plate covered in salt. Many recipes specify coarse or kosher salt; go for it if it’s handy and you want to go the classic route, but ordinary table salt works about as well. Place glass in the freezer for a minute or two at least (longer is better) to chill, if you haven’t already. Combine tequila, triple sec and lime juice in shaker with lots of ice. Shake like your life depends on it. Strain and pour into cocktail glass. As implied above, the margarita may also be made very respectably on the rocks and built in an old fashioned glass.

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Up to now, I haven’t had much luck with the brand of triple sec I’ve been using, but lime juice and tequila appears to be the perfect antidote to what ails my particular brand of this very sweet liqueur. I understand the drink will be even better with Cointreau (i.e., expensive triple sec) but it’s hard to imagine it getting that much better because this drink is amazing, especially considering how inexpensive its basic ingredients are, including the Sauza tequila I used.

If you really want to go the extra mile, however, try using the juice of several key limes, which are more sour and do an even better job of counteracting the ultra-sweet triple sec than standard fresh lime juice. Still, those key limes are tiny little buggers and a hassle to squeeze by hand.

Finally, since it seems mandatory to mention it, I should add that legend tell us that the margarita was developed somewhere in Baja California — either Ensenada or closer to Tijuana — and named after a young German or American woman whose name was either Margaret or Marjorie. Nobody seems to believe these stories very much, and the margarita is similar to so many other drinks that no such story is really necessary. I will say that whoever thought of salting the rim was pretty clever.

Like the nation for which it is named and the spirit with which it is made, this week’s selection is often overlooked and highly underrated. Indeed, at least on the web, it’s almost unheralded among cocktails, classic or otherwise. Still, it’s a pretty delightful variation — I’d say improvement — on a whiskey sour with a bit of classic margarita thrown in.

As the name would indicate, the Canadian Cocktail is definitely an enjoyable way to enjoy Don Draper and Nucky Thompson’s underrated favorite, Canadian Club, or, if you’re feeling like something a bit more complex, the new Canadian Club Classic 12 (as in 12 years-old). It’s part of a new wave of high end Canadian whisky and a beverage we’ll be returning to elsewhere.

The Canadian Cocktail

1 1/2 ounces Canadian whisky
1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 ounce orange curacao or triple sec
1-2 dash bitters (Angostura or orange)
1 teaspoon superfine sugar (highly optional)
1 maraschino cherry (garnish, fairly optional)

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker. If you’re adding sugar dissolve it. Add ice, shake like the dickens and strain into a chilled and preferably smallish rocks/old fashioned glass, perhaps one in which you’ve already tossed a maraschino cheery if you’ve skipped the sugar. Sip in a leisurely manner while watching a “Kids in the Hall” rerun or a Guy Maddin flick.

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There are other versions of this drink floating around the net. Some dispense with the lemon juice, which might work if you’re using a really good triple sec or a very small quantity of it. Some call for you to peel an entire orange rind to make a gigantic orange twist. I’m sure it’s a fine touch, but I haven’t learned to do that yet without threatening myself with major harm. I would, however, counsel cocktail cheapskates to use orange curacao, which should have a slight edge of bitterness. On the inexpensive end of the liqueur landscape, it brings a much more interesting and less insipid flavor to the drink.