Topical Guide 437
Mark Dorset
Drinking: Cocktails, Real and Fictional
From Reservations Recommended, Chapter 2:
When Richard’s eyes reach the waitress’s again, he smiles at her with great warmth. “What’s the most popular drink here?” he asks.
“Probably a Paul Revere’s Ride.”
“What’s that?”
“Supposed to be based on something the original Colonists drank. Rum and applejack.” She reaches across Richard to pick up, from the center of the table, a card describing the drink. Matthew notices that, although her breasts do not brush Richard’s face, they come close enough so that, if he had chosen to, he could have stuck his tongue out and licked them. She hands the card to him, and he glances at it.
“What about those drinks with obscene names?” he asks.
“‘A Sloe and Comfortable Screw’?”
“Right. Or ‘Sit on My Face.’”
“Not in this bar,” she says, and she bursts out laughing. “We get a lot of families, you know. Tourists.”
In Difford’s Guide for Discerning Drinkers, Simon Difford offers recipes for a whole “Screw Family of Cocktails,” introduced thusly:
Back in the 1970s and 80s sexual innuendo named cocktails were at the height of their popularity.
The family members include the “Slow Screw,” “Slow Comfortable Screw,” “Slow Comfortable Screw Against the Wall,” and “Slow Comfortable Screw Against a Cold Hard Wall.”
The Drinks Mixer website offers this “Sit On My Face shot drink” recipe:
1/3 oz Kahlua® coffee liqueur
1/3 oz Frangelico® hazelnut liqueur
1/3 oz Bailey's® Irish cream
Layer in order.
22% (44 proof)
Serve in: Shot Glass
Extensive research has failed to uncover a cocktail called “Paul Revere’s Ride.” However, over drinks with the Krafts two nights ago, I learned that the “Paul Revere’s Ride” is a fictionalization of the “Stonewall” served at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, where the Krafts first encountered it when they lived nearby in Stow, Massachusetts.
Like the “Paul Revere’s Ride” at Flynn’s Olde Boston Eating and Drinking Establishment in Reservations Recommended, the Stonewall was promoted at the Wayside Inn by a table card:
The Stonewall never made it into Kraft’s repertoire of cocktails, but its relative, the Coow Woow, certainly did. It, too, was promoted at the Wayside Inn on a table card:
The essential ingredients in a Coow Woow are rum and ginger brandy. The Krafts have found ginger brandy hard to obtain these days, but they discovered a substitute that is actually a substantial improvement. Herewith, Kraft’s own recipe for the Coow Woow:
6 ounces light rum
½ ounce Domaine de Canton Ginger Liqueur
Shake well with ice. Pour into cocktail glasses, straight up, ungarnished. Makes two.
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