Max "Bunny" Sparber

SOME OF YOU HAVE DRUNK BITTERS, usually with a cocktail. You can't be a real cocktail snob without learning to love bitters, as such classic -- and magnificent -- mixed drinks as the Manhattan and the Sazerac include the ingredient. The Odd Ingester has such a taste for bitters that he'll put it on top of ice cream once in a while, and adds it to orange juice. Get him alone and press him on the topic, he'll wax poetic about the virtues of Peychaud's versus Angostura, and go into detail about why a martini is incomplete without orange bitters. He's just obnoxious like that. In fact, when he's in an especially bold mood, the Odd Ingester will order a Negroni, a cocktail made with Campari, a liqueur that is basically just a giant bottle of bitters.

But bitters didn't begin life as a cocktail ingredient. No -- it started out as a digestive aid back in the day when most drugs were essentially just herbs steeped in neutral spirits, sometimes with laudanum thrown in for an extra kick. In fact, the abovementioned Sazerac was invented by a pharmacist named Peychaud in a pharmacy in New Orleans; he tossed some bitters into an egg cup coated with absinthe and added in some brandy, and, voila, the first cocktail. As you might have guessed, Peychaud's bitters were also named after him.

But The Odd Ingester digresses, because, as he mentioned, he is a fan of bitters, and, given the chance, will bore you silly with tales of them. However, The Odd Ingester is not here to discuss bitters-based cocktails. He is here to discuss Underberg Herbal Bitters, which is used as an after-supper digestif to this very day.

It is possible to get cardboard boxes with several bottles of the stuff at European grocery stores in the United States; The Odd Ingester got his at the Kramarczuk Deli in St. Anthony. The bottles are tiny, about the size of those single shots of liquor you get on airplanes, and the box they come in is verdant with an image of a fairy floating above a grassy field bisected by a babbling brook pouring down from a distant mountain. Herbs flow out of the fairy's hands and wrap themselves around the moon, or, at least, The Odd Ingester assumes it is our moon. An image such as that might be meant to represent Middle Earth.

The bottles come wrapped in paper and are intended as one complete serving. It is possible to buy a very tall glass with a long, narrow stem to drink Underberg from, if you are very serious about having it after every meal, as The Odd Ingester assume some are. Perhaps, one day, The Odd Ingester will be such a man; today he is not, so he drank it straight from the bottle.

It tastes like bitters, of course. If you've drunk a shot of Jägermeister, you have a fair sense of what the flavor is, although each brand of bitters has its own character. Underberg is exceptionally bitter, and strongly herbal. The packaging refuses to name the ingredients, although it does let on that there are 43 selected aromatic herbs, and the roots of the genus gentiana, a plant highly regarded for its healing properties and one of the constituent ingredients in the soft drink Moxie. This delights The Odd Ingester, as Moxie was a drink frequently referenced in MAD Magazine.

What else might be in it? The Odd Ingester guesses gentian and perhaps wormwood, although this is just speculation based on the flavor. Whatever is in it, it's a real kick in the pants, flooding the mouth with bitterness, albeit with a surprisingly palatable, almost sweet finish. The drink is alcoholic, as are all bitters (44% by volume, or 88 proof, which is quite strong); however, the drink can be sold at health food stores and grocery stores, and even sold to children, under the assumption that nobody would really drink the stuff to get drunk.

The Odd Ingester had his after a meal. Did it help his digestion? Not that could be demonstrated, but it certainly made for some after-supper entertainment, and that's all The Odd Ingester really wants.

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