it was no long while ago that I ventured into the captain’s own private cabin and took thence the materials with which I write, and have written. I shall from time to time continue this journal. It is true that I may not find an opportunity of transmitting it to the world, but I will not fail to make the endeavor. At the last moment I will enclose the MS. in a bottle and cast it within the sea.

The long MS derives from a somewhat outlandish premise, as it portrays ever-worsening maritime predicaments and tragedies, and yet its author devotes hours and hours writing this long, extravagant tale rather than solely fight for survival. First, a sudden storm washes the entire crew off the deck of the ship on which the narrator is a passenger, and only he and an “Old Swede” survive.  For five days they drift toward the south pole, and eventually the sun disappears for good. They then collide with a huge galleon that essentially falls out of the sky; the Swede perishes and the narrator manages to board the larger ship. This ship is populated by ghosts (or maybe the narrator is the ghost, for he is never acknowledged by the galleon’s crew). The galleon itself eventually sinks in a whirlpool, but at the last moment the narrator manages to finish his MS, stick it into a bottle, and cast it overboard.

The tale feels absurd, and it has been suggested that it’s in fact a parody of the overwrought adventure tales that were popular in Poe’s time. But at least it makes use of unintentionally-humorous nautical phrases like “the wind is still in our poop.”

The full story is available here.

So we’ve got the bottle part licked; but what of the “MS” part? The purists among you might want to literally insert a rolled-up message into the bottle, perhaps using waterproof paper or some other method for avoiding a soggy, disgusting mess. But here is where modern technology for once presents an improvement on the old-fashioned approach to mixology: We’re simply going to add a QR code, which in turn will link to Poe’s MS! Huzzah! Even better, this cocktail contains a nice puzzle element, allowing the imbiber to “discover” the MS in (or on) the bottle. 

To really drive the story home, this drink contains “jaggeree” – an unrefined sugar made from palm sap – on which the narrator subsisted for five days while drifting aboard the storm-ruined vessel. Who wouldn’t want to be figuratively transported into that adventure?!

1. Print out the QR code that I’ve helpfully placed at the bottom of this page. Affix it to a bottle of stout.
2. Dissolve a small cube of jaggeree or other palm-sap based sugar in the Scotch. Set aside.
3. Open and drink about half the bottle of stout. If you somehow mess this step up, then finish the bottle and try again with another bottle. Repeat until you get it right.
4. Carefully add the Scotch/jaggeree mixture and the liqueur to your half-full bottle of stout. You may want to use a funnel for this step.
5. Serve to an unsuspecting guest, telling them only the name of the drink. Wait for them to figure out the puzzle.

Oh, and here’s your QR code:

I was sick — sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence — the dread sentence of death — was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.

The full story is available here.

Admittedly, the central gimmick to this drink is the play on the word “pit,” as well as the visual allegory of a lime pendulum blade. The umami bitters are the most reckless of the ingredients, mucking up what might otherwise be a refreshing drink, but I felt them necessary to evoke the spicy meat that the narrator rubbed on the rope that bound him, in order to entice the rats to gnaw through it and set him free. So there’s that.

First, carve up a lime wheel into a crescent shape and place it at the end of a cocktail pick, to resemble the deadly “pendulum.” Place it at a menacing angle in a chilled coupe glass. Combine the gin, liqueur, and bitters in a mixing glass with ice and stir, then strain into the prepared glass. Add a cherry (with the pit–that’s the whole point!).

(Originally I tried using Scotch and orange juice, but you couldn’t easily make out the pendulum through the murky liquid. This is a form-over-function kind of situation.)

It writhes!–it writhes!–with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

The basic outline of the poem presents a theater presentation that is horribly ruined by a “conqueror worm” that essentially eats up the performers (“mimes”). Poe ends the poem on this cheery note: “…the play is the tragedy, ‘Man,’ / And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

The poem (or at least its title) has made its way into songs and movies. For example: The 1968 British horror film The Witchfinder General, starring Vincent Price, was retitled The Conqueror Worm for its release in the US. But the film really has nothing to do with Poe’s poem.

The full story is available here.

For the ingredients, I figured we needed a neutral spirit so as not to clash with the distinct gummy flavor. So I chose vodka. To this we add some Aperol, whose sweetness is in sync with the gummy’s sugar, but whose bitterness saves this drink from being too cloying. A couple of dashes of chocolate bitters adds depth; trust me on this one.

Mix the vodka, aperol, and bitters in a shaker with ice. Strain into a coupe glass that’s been filled to the top with crushed ice. Add a single gummy worm on top of the ice, leaning over the rim of the glass.

This drink goes down easy, like a Sunday morning. Eat the alcohol-soaked worm at the end as a special treat.

Owing to their vast antiquity, the style of architecture is somewhat odd — but is not for that reason the less strikingly picturesque. They are fashioned of hard-burned little bricks, red, with black ends, so that the walls look like chess-boards upon a great scale. The gables are turned to the front, and there are cornices as big as all the rest of the house over the eaves, and over the main doors. The windows are narrow and deep, with very tiny panes and a great deal of sash. On the roof is a vast quantity of tiles with long curly ears. The wood-work, throughout, is of dingy oak, and there is much carving about it, with but a trifling variety of pattern; for time out of mind, the carvers of Vondervotteimittiss have never been able to carve more than two objects — a time-piece and a cabbage. But these they do excellently well, and intersperse them with singular ingenuity wherever they find room for the chisel.

The plot, such as it is, centers on the town’s enormous, seven-faced clock, which is the village’s “pride and wonder” that sits atop a steeple. One day a sinister-looking stranger gets to the top of the tower, assaults the clock-keeper, and causes the clock to strike thirteen, which in turn throws the time-fixated and routinized townspeople into rudderless confusion. The narrator concludes with this: “Let us proceed in a body to the borough, and restore the ancient order of things in Vondervotteimittiss by ejecting that little chap from the steeple.” If only all of life’s problems could be solved so easily!

The full story is available here.

The cabbage part is simultaneously simple and fraught. I opted for a purple cabbage, which will impart a lovely hue but also a disgusting, flatulent taste and smell. I’m told that one can somewhat mitigate the taste and smell by using dehydrated cabbage. But really, where am I going to find that? No, this is one of those cases where I’m just going to have to (literally) hold my nose and soldier through.

I chopped up some cabbage and thyme, and steeped them in vodka for an hour. The longer it steeps, the more intense the color…and the more disgusting the taste. So you’ll have to use your own judgment here. I then added some triple sec to try to mask the cabbage a bit, but this strategy invokes the proverbial lipstick-on-a-pig epithet. Finally, as the cabbage is readily evident in the color of the drink, I added a spring of thyme to drive home the timepiece reference. The result was visually satisfactory, though, alas, the same cannot be said for its gustatory qualities.

Add the vodka, cabbage, and chopped thyme to a cocktail shaker. Shake it up, then let it steep for 10 minutes to an hour, depending on where you draw the line between attractive color and disgusting taste. Strain into a rocks glass with fresh ice. Add triple sec, stir, and add a sprig of thyme as a garnish.

I’m not going to lie: This is quite possibly the most revolting cocktail I’ve ever experienced. I would encourage you to pour it down the sink. Unless you have old, unreliable plumbing, in which case I would pour it down the sewer grate in the gutter in front of your house. Make sure the local environmental-quality authorities are not watching.