Former Pastry War general manager Kehlen Selph found her muse for this recipe via a drink called the Cucaracha Rum, a blackstrap-heavy cocktail from a 1920s bar in Mexico City called La Cucaracha Cocktail Club. “There was no mezcal on the menu, but this was a classic cocktail from Mexico City in the 1920s, so I wanted to use it as inspiration and see what it would taste like with mezcal,” Selph says. Heaps of dark, molasses-like sugars and notes of overripe pear counterbalance subtle hints of orange blossom, with mezcal acting as a vigorous undercurrent of smoke.