It’s not like the Manhattan was some faddish new American drink as of 1936, either. I have to assume it was something that one could get on the steamships.

But, who knows?

The “frosted cocktail” sounds like something that would have been tasty during tropical flights, but yeah, it’s not like there’s anything particularly inventive about a gin-and-orange.

Then again, Cheryl Ganz once told me that she had the pleasure of sitting down with the Hindenburg’s head chef and she asked him about some of the more obscure dishes that she’d seen on various Hindenburg menus, and (as I recall, anyway – Cheryl, if you’re reading this and I’m totally blowing the story, by all means please correct me!) Maier apparently chuckled and said something to the effect that a lot of times they’d just throw together whatever they had onhand (potatoes mixed with this, that, and/or the other, for example) and then come up with a fancy name for it for the menu.

I imagine the bar recipes might have often been a similar sort of thing. Though I do kind of tend to figure that whatever the Maybach 12 was, it was probably a good bit more of an ass-kicker than the Frosted Cocktail was. I always have an image of something the color of motor oil, with a helluva backfire to it.

Although with all respect to the departed, his “LZ-129 Frosted Cocktail” didn’t sound terribly exciting (equal parts gin and orange juice — why?).

And as you know, the January, 1937 memo written by the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei’s American representative Willi von Meister expressed surprise that on a ship so heavily traveled by Americans, the bartender had never even heard of a Manhattan.

Now if we could just dig up some idea of what was in the long-lost “Maybach 12″.

(Why, oh why, of all people, did the Hindenburg’s BARTENDER have to die at Lakehurst?!)