The Enormous Schwanzstucker

• 2.0 oz. White Rum
• 0.75 oz. lemon juice
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake with ice and strain into sugar rimmed cocktail glass.
Light one ounce of Cointreau on fire and pour into glass.
Toast stick of cinnamon and stir resulting drink with stick.

Fire! Fire good! Here we have rum from a Daiquiri, bitters from a Manhattan and lemon juice and sugared rim from a Sidecar. The Cointreau comes from a Margarita, and seeing it lit aflame is a cool effect but honestly does nothing for the drink. The toasted cinnamon stick, on the other hand, really helps the nose of the final drink.

Omit the cinnamon stick and you just have a Schwanzstucker, so use the cinnamon stick. Woof.

Hello, Handsome!

• 2.0 oz. Cognac
• 0.75 oz. sweet vermouth
• 1 dash orange bitters

Stir with ice and strain into coupe imbued with smoked cherry wood chips.
Garnish with Maraschino cherry.

This was the first cocktail that I not only imagined, but made for my Young Frankenstein collection. I bought my new favorite toy, The Smoking Gun, after seeing it employed for a number of drinks during my trip to Sydney. Basically, you put wood chips in it, light the chips, and smoke is produced out of a long rubber tube, which can be used to infuse in food or cocktails.

For this drink I used Cognac from a Sidecar, part of the sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica) from a Negroni and orange bitters from a Martini. While that is mixed and stirred, I turn a coupe over on the counter and fill it with cherry wood smoke. When the drink is ready, the coupe is flipped, releasing the smoke. The drink is poured in and a cherry from a Manhattan is dropped in. You get nice hints of smoke without it being overwhelming, which I think plays nicely with the Cognac.

Of course, the kitchen smokes up something fierce during this process and lasts for an hour or two. Small price to pay.

Sedagive

• 2.5 oz. London Dry Gin
• 0.5 oz. simple syrup
• 0.5 oz. lime juice
• 0.25 oz. Harvest Reisling vinegar

Shake with ice, then strain into cocktail glass with salted rim.

Gin from a Martini, simple syrup and a bit of lime juice from a Daiquiri and additional lime juice from a Margarita. The Abby Normal here is the vinegar, though it’s not so abnormal for me as I have a whole bunch of these unique flavorings that I’ve collected in the past year. This one I picked up in Mystic, CT, from Extra Virgin Oil. It definitely gives the drink some pucker with the lime that the salted rim (from a Margarita as well) helps to balance.

In the movie Young Frankenstein, “sedagive” is the ludicrous guess made at the being-strangled doctor’s charades attempt. Although this scene and line appears in the musical, the final ludicrous guess made is “Flying Down to Rio.” I don’t know. This is one of the many little changes made from the film that I question. But perhaps to accommodate you can throw an umbrella in the drink for a little Brazilian flair. Pra caramba!

Zipperneck

• 1 oz. London Dry Gin
• 1 oz. Cointreau
• 0.25 oz. lime juice
• 1/4 tsp. Ponzu

Here’s a light and unique sipper using the gin from a Negroni, the Cointreau from a Sidecar and part of the lime juice from a Daiquiri. The Abby Normal ingredient here is obviously the Ponzu, a soy sauce with a hint of citrus. It provides a wonderful saltiness to the drink that I love.

In Young Frankenstein there is a line about choosing a giant corpse to simplify working with all the parts. I think in this drink’s case pilfering a much larger Negroni and Margarita would help. Doubling the size might be a little much, but using 1.5 oz. gin and Cointreau would make sense to me, perhaps keeping the lime juice and Ponzu at the above measurements.

It just occurred to me a garnish of a Ritz cracker might be appropriate…

There Wolves!

• 2.0 oz. Reposado Tequila
• 0.75 oz. sweet vermouth
• 0.5 oz. dry vermouth
• 2 drops liquid smoke

Stir without ice and pour into coupe.
Garnish with a lemon twist.

Ooo, this was a tough one. It was actually the last cocktail I made from the ingredients I had leftover from the other Young Frankenstein drinks, with tequila from a Margarita, part of the sweet vermouth from a Manhattan, and a lemon twist and dry vermouth from a Martini. My initial thought was to use Sriracha or a cayenne hot sauce I had as my Abby Normal ingredient. Neither worked well. I spent a bit of time lingering on one variation that used a sweet Thai chili sauce, but eventually nixed it. I then purchased another hot sauce with a sweeter angle (honey habanero) and even tried a spicy wing sauce. In all cases, I was losing the tequila and even if the drink had an initial welcoming though unusual taste it quickly wore out that welcome.

I was about to throw up my hands and start rearranging some of my other drinks to allow for a different combination when it occurred to me to try my little bottle of liquid smoke which I acquired probably two years ago and had never utilized. Just a couple of drops is all you need to impart the hickory smoke flavor (it’s concentrated). I tasted it before stirring and really enjoyed it, so proceeded with a stir with ice and… then I didn’t like it. I lost the tequila again and actually felt the dry vermouth was dominant, though there was less of that than the sweet vermouth or tequila. The dilution of water just really brought it to the forefront.

So I tried it again, stirring without ice. Perfect. There wolves, there castle.

What Hump?

• 2.0 oz. Rye
• 1.0 oz. Campari
• 0.5 oz. lime juice
• 2 tsp. sour cherry jam

Shake with ice and double strain into coupe.
Garnish with orange twist.

For the first of my Young Frankenstein cocktails I took rye from a Manhattan, Campari and an orange twist from a Negroni and part of the lime juice from a Margarita, and then combined that with my Abby Normal ingredient of sour cherry jam. Using jam and preserves is somewhat trendy (or maybe just passed the trend — truth be told, I’m not that trendy), but it isn’t something that I’ve really tried. That’s a shame since there are some great artisanal jams out there which can provide some interesting sweeteners for drinks.

For me I chose sour cherry so that the resulting drink wouldn’t be too sweet and would stay more on the tart side, which this drink certainly does, especially with all that lime juice. The sour cherries give it a nice hint of sweetness, but tart and bitter (from all that Campari) win out here. For rye, I went with the bonded Rittenhouse which holds its own against the strength of the other ingredients.

The orange twist is the hump. Feel free to put it on the right or left side. On in the middle.

I was going to stop at three food-based cocktails for my Parade series, but then “deviled eggs” was mentioned to me as a joke (I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it since it is one of my lines; maybe something in my subconscious was trying to protect me). I’ve never made a full egg drink before, always staying with just the whites, so thought it might be fun to give it a go.

Deviled Eggs

• 1.0 oz. Silver Tequila
• 1.0 oz. Mezcal
• 1.0 oz. Benedictine
• 0.5 oz. lemon juice
• 0.25 oz. serrano balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
• 2 dashes Chipotle Single Malt bitters
• 2 dashes Caramelized Ramp bitters
• 1 pinch sweet onion sugar
• 1 pinch paprika
• 1 whole egg

Shake without ice then shake with ice.
Double strain into cocktail glass.
Garnish with cracked black pepper.

I don’t make many drinks with lots of ingredients, sticking mostly to a 3-4 + bitters sort of model, but I felt this one called for it. I wanted smokiness and spice, so I used a mezcal and tequila base with the serrano balsamic and chipotle bitters for some bite. For sweetness, other than the balsamic, I turned to Benedictine and a bit of a sweet onion sugar (in the past I tried to use this in a cocktail that turned out to taste like an everything bagel…), and in keeping the vegetable direction I added the caramelized ramp bitters. The lemon juice added some needed acidity and with the paprika seemed to work with the deviled egg theme. The final result with the egg was tasty but I didn’t think pushed things enough where they needed to go. Enter the Dijon mustard, which I think gave it just the right bite.

I can’t believe I made a deviled eggs cocktail.

Pig Grease and Corn Bread

• 1.5 oz. Maple bacon-infused Bourbon
• 1.0 oz. Dry Vermouth
• 0.5 oz. Flag Hill Sugar Maple Liqueur
• 0.5 oz. Amaro Montenegro
• 4 dashes Urban Moonshine maple bitters

Stir with ice and strain into old fashioned rimmed with pancetta over ice.

I’ve had bacon-infused or bacon-washed whiskey at a number of places, but had never tried to do it myself. So when the line in Parade about “pig grease and corn bread” was spoken I immediately thought of it. (Man, that says something about me…)

At first, I used a 100% corn whiskey and since I had recently infused some rye and port with duck fat successfully I tried a similar approach with the bacon, infusing the whiskey with the drippings after frying up a healthy amount of bacon. Um.. no. Pretty disgusting (got a bottle here for free for anyone who wants it). Next I tried infusing another batch of corn whiskey with a few slices of bacon for about 12 hours. The results were exceptionally strong (the corn whiskey was also cheap and 100 proof), and I wasn’t sure I was necessarily tasting what I would describe as bacon. Finally, I went for bourbon, which at least is over 50% corn so still kept with the theme of the drink, and I also went with a maple bacon as opposed to simply a smoked applewood. The results were much more palatable, so I used this as a base.

After an attempt using maple syrup (way too sweet, even in a small amount) I opted for a maple liqueur, with the amaro for some added bitterness and the maple bitters to tie the bitter with the sweet. The vermouth just opened up the drink a bit, smoothing out the rough edges. For a garnish, I fried up some pancetta, let it dry, then ground it up and rimmed the glass. The saltiness was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the drink, and certainly contributed to the bacon taste of the result. Alternatively, I have tried it with a little sprinkling of bourbon smoked salt instead, and that was equally yummy.

Mmmmm… bacon.

OK, even though Watermelon Pickles was the first Parade drink I conceptualized, I hadn’t really locked on a concept for the whole collection and so hadn’t proceeded with mixing anything up. Coming up with random drinks isn’t as fun for me as finding a theme that I can carry through. It was when I heard a line, spoken by Leo, that all he wanted for breakfast was “an apple and some coffee” that things came together. Apple and coffee I could work with. Now I had two drinks based on food spoken about in the show, and the theme was set.

Apple and Some Coffee

• 2.0 oz. Apple Brandy
• 1.0 oz. Cocchi Americano
• 0.5 oz. Kalhua
• 2 dashes coffee bitters

Stir with ice and strain into coupe.
Grate coffee bean as garnish.

I used Carriage House apple brandy here, but would be curious to try some applejack in its place to see how that changes things. The Kalhua obviously brings on the coffee taste — a little goes a long way here. I felt the Cocchi brightened up the result somewhat, which was feeling dark and heavy from the Kalhua, and added some bitterness as well. The coffee bitters provided some additional coffee flavor while countering the Kahlua’s sweetness. The final garnish of the bean is really for the nose more than anything else.

There you go, Leo. Have a nice breakfast. Much better than the pig grease and corn bread they gave you. Hmmm. Pig grease and corn bread…

In the musical Parade watermelon pickles are mentioned a few times, once by me, so as I was trying to think of some drinks I could make related to the show I almost immediately locked on to this quirky condiment. I had no idea what the things were, but I could at least play with the thought. So I did.

Watermelon Pickles

• 2.0 oz. American Dry Gin
• 0.5 oz. watermelon syrup
• 0.25 oz. lemon juice
• 0.25 oz. tequila lime vinegar
• 3 drops salt water
• 2 dashes lemon bitters

Shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass.
Garnish with sweet watermelon pickles.

I did actually find a jar of the sweet pickled watermelon rind, which are.. interesting, so I added it as a garnish. The drink itself, though, is inspired more by the idea of pickles and watermelons than by the actual taste of the food. I had a watermelon simple syrup from Monin’s and used this with some gin (Bluecoat). For the pickling I added the vinegar which I found in a specialty shop last year, plus a little lemon juice for even more pucker and acid. I added the salt just because that’s what I like with my watermelon and to generally enhance the flavors already present, and finished with the lemon bitters to balance the sweet and tart.

Watermelon Pickles. Drink it, don’t eat it.