Monkey Gland

Gin, fresh orange juice, grenadine, and absinthe — Harry MacElhone's 1923 cocktail named for the discredited Voronoff rejuvenation procedure that transfixed Paris.

The Monkey Gland was created by Harry MacElhone at Harry's New York Bar on Rue Daunou in Paris around 1923 and named for one of the most sensational medical controversies of the early 1920s. Serge Voronoff — a Franco-Russian surgeon (1866–1951) who worked in Paris and Egypt — had published research in 1920 claiming that transplanting thin slices of chimpanzee testicular tissue onto the testes of elderly men could restore sexual vitality, reverse the aging process, and significantly extend life expectancy. Voronoff's procedure, which he called rejuvenation, generated enormous press coverage: by 1923 he had performed the operation on over one hundred men, wealthy European and American clients paid significant fees for it, and the mainstream medical press debated his claims seriously before the scientific consensus turned against him in the late 1920s. MacElhone's decision to name a cocktail after Voronoff's procedure was a direct commercial exploitation of public fascination — the name guaranteed attention and conversation in a Paris bar scene full of journalists, American expatriates, and fashionable visitors aware of the controversy. The formula — gin, fresh orange juice, grenadine, and absinthe — is a citrus-forward cocktail whose absinthe dash provides the aromatic bridge that prevents the sweet orange-and-grenadine combination from becoming one-dimensional.