The Electric Current Fizz Is a Jolt of Energy

In a 2009 email to the Milk & Honey staff, Michael Madrusan describes the method for building an Electric Current Fizz: “make a silver fizz. Serve the yolk alongside the fizz in the half shell with pepper, salt, vinegar. Nice.” 

Having discovered the recipe in George Kappeler’s Modern American Drinks, a guide from 1895, Madrusan was drawn to the unique presentation of the seasoned egg yolk—often referred to in bartending as a “prairie oyster”—served alongside the cocktail. “People love the show of it,” says Madrusan. “The biggest question [they ask] is, ‘Which one do I have first?’”  

For the best experience, shoot the yolk, then follow with a generous sip of the fizz. The first burst of the yolk is creamy, tangy and delightfully unexpected, giving way to the taut, juniper-driven intensity of London dry gin and the bright lift of lemon and soda. It delivers a full-sensory jolt. 

In its era, the Electric Current Fizz belonged to the family of “bracers,” tonics that the heavy-drinking public of the late 19th and early 20th centuries believed to have medicinal value. These included the likes of Corpse Revivers and Fog Cutters—morning-after cocktails meant to restore the constitution after a long night.

Prohibition took many of these drinking traditions with it—perhaps for good—but bartenders like Madrusan, now the owner of Melbourne’s Everleigh, unearthed them during the cocktail revival of the early 2000s, a time when bartenders were reimagining old recipes for a new generation of drinkers. In the Madrusan Cocktail Companion—a sprawling, 2,800 recipe volume he co-wrote with his partner Zara—Madrusan recalls his first attempt to make the Electric Current Fizz. Without any vinegar behind the bar, he tried Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco instead. These components, common in the making of Bloody Marys, have become the standard way to prepare the yolk. (Ironically, though, Madrusan has a severe fish and shellfish allergy, which keeps him from ever tasting the Worcestershire-laced version that helped bring the drink back.) 

Today, the fizz—which is “perhaps even more of a meal,” says Madrusan—has become an industry favorite. Both a dynamic remedy for the hungover and a vivid glimpse into the cocktail world’s past, the Electric Current Fizz is now an off-menu showpiece. “It’s definitely something we serve as a What’s the weirdest thing you can make me? cocktail,” says Jon Nutter, head bartender at Attaboy in New York. As Madrusan puts it: “I’ve never seen anyone not be full of shock and excitement when this drink plops down in front of them.”