sidecar — The Cocktails — Beyond Reproach

1 ounce cognac
1 ounce light rum
1 ounce Cointreau or triple sec
1/2 ounce lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake until frosty and strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a lemon or orange twist if desired

Harry MacElhone from Harry’s New York Bar is often given credit for inventing a whole slew of classic cocktails, like the French 75, the White Lady, the Old Pal, the Monkey Gland, The Bloody Mary, and the Sidecar just to name a few. But dig any further than the surface and it’s much more realistic to say his bar just popularized recipes rather than actually creating them.

The modern version of the Between the Sheets is basically just a twist on a classic sidecar. If you eliminate the sugar rim and add some white rum, boom, you have a between the sheets. Many older recipes actually call for gin rather than brandy though. Some cocktail historians believe that the true origin story of this cocktail is that it was invented in the United States sometime during prohibition as a gin-based cocktail, but that when Harry’s Bar heard about the recipe, they switched the gin for cognac to make it smoother and more elegant.

Either way, the cognac and rum based version from Harry’s bar is the one that really took off and became the iconic and classic Between the sheets that people know today.

2 ounces Cognac
1 ounce Cointreau or similar orange liqueur
1 ounce lemon juice
orange twist or wedge (optional garnish)

Combine the cognac, cointreau, & lemon juice in a cocktail mixing glass or shaker. Add plenty of ice and stir until frosty cold. Strain into a chilled coupe or cocktail glass with a sugared rim (if desired) * see note.
Garnish with an orange twist or wedge.

*note: To rim the glass with sugar, dip the rim into a plate with a small amount of water, and then dip the wet rim into another plate with sugar. If you want to do half the rim, you can wipe the other half dry before dipping into the sugar. This allows the drinker to decided if and how much sugar they’d like.

The sidecar was wildly popular in the 1960s, but the recipe had been around for a good long time. In fact, the recipe actually evolved from a 19th century classic called the Brandy Crusta.

The Crusta was a huge deal when it came on the scene because it actually changed the entire idea of what people thought a cocktail could be. The original formula for a cocktail dictated that it should include strong spirits, water, sugar, & bitters. The Crusta however, used lemon juice instead of water, which was practically ground breaking at the time. It was also served in a sugar rimmed glass, which was also seen as an innovation.

When Jerry Thomas included the recipe for the Crusta in his cocktail book, their popularity skyrocketed. Over the years, the recipe evolved. Generations of bartenders put their own spins on it to make it their own, playing with the balance, ingredients, and presentation. Before you knew it, the recipe looked more like today’s Sidecar than yesterday’s Brandy Crusta.

The origins of the name of the sidecar are disputed, but it was likely invented around the end of World War II, either in Paris or London. The common belief is that it was named after an army captain who liked to ride to the bar in the sidecar of his motorcycle.

However, in The Essential Cocktail Dale DeGroff wrote, “The word sidecar means something totally different in the world of the cocktail: if the bartender misses his mark on ingredient quantities so when he strains the drink into the serving glass there’s a bit left over in the shaker, he pours out that little extra into a shot glass on the side – that little glass is called a sidecar.”

As the Sidecar morphed from the Crusta, it was originally still made with brandy, but brandy can vary a lot in flavor depending on where and how it was made. Just like wine, Brandy can be sweet, fruity, dry, earthy, etc.
So, depending on the brandy used, bartenders would need to adjust the amounts of the other ingredients to ensure a balanced cocktail that wouldn’t be too sweet or too tart.
While Cognac is a type of brandy, the flavor from brand to brand tends to be much more steady, so eventually the brandy was swapped with cognac to ensure a more reliable, balanced final product.

A lot of sidecar recipes call for a sugared rim just like a Brandy Crusta, but some bartenders prefer to leave the sugar off. We’re not exactly certain if the sugar would have been popular in the 60s, so we decided to only coat half of the rim in sugar to give the drinker the option of choosing whether they want the sugar or not.