Genius Chimp

Monkey Gland Cocktail

 

INGREDIENTS
2 ounces gin
1 1/2 ounces fresh orange juice
2 dashes of grenadine
2 dashes of Pernod or Bénédictine
Twist of orange peel

INSTRUCTIONS
Shake the gin, orange juice, grenadine, and Pernod very well with ice; then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with orange peel.

The Monkey Gland is a gin-based cocktail blended with orange juice and enlivened by grenadine and Pernod. Few classic cocktails of such appealing character have such odious names. Harry MacElhone, owner of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, is credited with mixing the first Monkey Gland in the 1920s. The sonorous sobriquet was inspired by the work of Serge Voronoff, a Russian who experimented with the sexual organs of monkeys for rejuvenation. The verdict is not in on the procedures with the naughty bits of monkeys, but the bygone fashionable drink is a reliable rejuvenator.

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Smuggling Monkey Meat

In New York there is an ongoing case of a woman that smuggled monkey meat into America for human consumption. Mamie Manneh, originally of Liberia, claims that she didn't know that there was monkey, or as it is referred to "bushmeat", in her package. From the article:

According to the agents, she initially denied ordering any bushmeat from Africa or ever eating it while in the United States.

But after she consented to a search, the agents came across a tiny, hairy arm hidden in her garage.

"Monkey," she explained, claiming the arm was sent to her out of the blue "as a gift from God in heaven."

The claim is that the monkey meat is necessary for religious reasons, but truthfully it seems as if it is more traditional than sacred to me. Here is what a member of her combination Christian/Tribal Custom church had to say:

One of the few worshippers left, Leona Artis, says the congregation's appetite for monkey meat is deeply misunderstood.

Take Thanksgiving.

"Where some people have turkey, we'll have monkey meat," Artis said. "I've been eating it all my life. It's delicious."

Baptisms, Easter, Christmas, weddings — all are occasions for eating monkey, Manneh's supporters said in a sworn statement filed with the court.

The statement was vague about how the meat is obtained, but explains that it always arrives dried and smoked. Once blessed by a pastor, "we usually prepare it by cooking it for several hours into a stew," they said.

For them, the exotic import is more than just food.

"We eat bushmeat," they said, "for our souls."

Genius Chimp is firmly against using monkeys as food products. Eating them is just one more thing they will hold against us after the monkey uprising.

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