“Nyeh heh heh!” - Papyrus, UNDERTALE

Inspiration

Papyrus and his skele-bro Sans are libations that share epic commonalities with their in-game personas. Not only do they look basically the same, they also taste similar to their personalities! Much to Papyrus’ chagrin, his drink is based around the similarity his name has with an IRL fruit called the papaya. Get it? Papaya-rus - Papyrus! Now you do. In creating this drink, I had a few requirements. Namely, it had to be opaque and white, like a skeleton, it had to be Papaya-forward and sweet, like our bone-lad, and it also had to fit in the Great Papyrus glass, because it looked like his head.

Workshopping

Clarified Papaya Juice

In my attempts to keep Papyrus’s drink white and opaque, I had thought that there might be a way to take all of the color out of papaya juice. To create papaya juice, you can slice the fruit down the middle and discard the seeds and outer skin. Blending the orange flesh on the inside creates a light orange juice that after oxidizing will turn a darker red-orange color. If using a blender, you can add 1-2 drops of Pectinex Ultra SP-L to your juice, and the juice will filter almost clear when left to sit over some cheesecloth.

This was my first time using Pectinex to clarify a fruit juice so it took me a couple tries to get a totally clear liquid. In case your papaya juice comes out cloudy, add a drop or so more of Pectinex (too much will alter the flavor) and wait to allow the heavier orange particles to sink to the bottom. I used a pipette to siphon off the top, clear and almost colorless papaya juice to be used in the cocktail.

On the note of papaya juice as an ingredient. I will admit that it sort of smells like barf. This feels likely the result of poor storage on my part, but in case you encounter a similar thing: Don’t worry! It’s totally normal!

When researching how to use papaya juice, I turned to the good ol’ Death & Co Welcome Home book to find that their house papaya mix uses creme de cacao. Adding a bit of this to the papaya juice seemed to make it taste even more like papaya, which was awesome!

Cool Dude?

There were a number of ingredients that I tried with the papaya juice and creme de cacao combo as I surfed towards a final recipe. My first instinct was to add peanut butter whiskey to the mix since chocolate and peanut butter mix well and Papyrus’s date outfit featured basketballs. The connection here was basketball - butter ball - peanut butter. In case that made sense to you, great! If it didn’t, no worries, it didn’t work anyway. Peanut butter whiskey just doesn’t let the papaya be the star of the show. If this is a drink for the Great Papyrus, then the papaya must be GREAT.

I had tried adding some floral elements too like elderflower liqueur (the “ketchup” of cocktail mixology) but I wasn’t able to find anything eventful down this venture before my papaya juice batch straight up spoiled. Luckily, after a second batched was whipped up, I had a better idea!

Oat-Geat!

An aspect that I had been conveniently ignoring until the end was how to make Papyrus opaque and white. I thought about using milk because calcium and bones and stuff, but it didn’t strike me as the flamboyant type of ingredient deserving of the character in question. My references on Tiki cocktails denote orgeat can add flavor to a number of drinks. Orgeat is normally an almond-based sweetener. I had no almonds but I did have oat milk. Conveniently a recipe over on PUNCH drink existed for this stuff called oat-geat which was just what this skeleton needed. Created using oat milk, sugar, rose water, and vanilla extract, this mixture provided the color and flavor needed to transform Papyrus into a cocktail really worth drinking!

Putting everything together, the drink needed a bit more booze and a pinch of tartness to balance things out. I opted for a white rum to complement the orgeat alternative’s usual pairing in Tiki drinks and lemon juice.

Only one thing was missing at this point. Papyrus’s iconic smile!

Papyrus’s Face

Dang right, that’s his face on the glass! I have a vinyl cutter which would probably be great for adorning glassware, but I’ve been keeping it simple with sticker paper. If you’d like to embellish your glassware similarly, here is the sheet I used for Papyrus’s and Sans’s faces.

Flavor Analysis

Lightly sweet and papaya-forward both in its flavor and its creamy texture. Subtler notes of lemon and rose peak through the otherwise dominant papaya flavor. The mouthfeel is similar to that of the papaya fruit itself, however this is simulated by the oat milk orgeat.