Sidecar

What to expect

Taste

Dry, sharp and warm, in that order. The lemon lands first and hard. Behind it the orange liqueur is much less sweet than its smell promises — a good Cointreau is dry and quite bitter at the edges, all peel oil rather than marmalade — and the two citruses stack into something brighter than either. The cognac is the last thing to arrive and the thing the drink is actually about: dried apricot, raisin, a little oak and vanilla, and a soft grapey roundness underneath that softens the acid without sweetening it. The finish is dry, warm and slightly bitter from the orange oil. Where the drink goes wrong it goes sweet, not sour, and it happens without warning because the sweetness comes from a liqueur whose sugar level varies by brand.

Aroma

Orange oil first, sprayed off the twist, and it is the most aromatic thing in the glass by a distance. Underneath, lemon, and then the cognac's own smell, which is the interesting one: dried fruit, old wood, a faint floral note like grape blossom, and a warmth that reads as sweetness before you taste anything. Cold suppresses all of it, so a sidecar smells much louder after two minutes in the glass than it does the second it is poured.

Texture

Clean, thin and bright. There is no body here except what the liqueur's sugar provides, and that is exactly enough to stop the drink feeling hard-edged. Shaking gives the first mouthful a fractional softness that the second one has lost. Where there is a sugared rim, the texture changes between lip and tongue — dry crystals, then cold liquid — and that contrast is most of the argument for having one.

Sound

A hard, bright rattle from the shake, shorter and sharper than a drink with juice-heavy volume, going duller as the ice breaks. Then the crack of the seal, a thin quiet pour, and nothing at all. A sidecar is a silent drink in the glass; there is no ice in it to shift and no carbonation to fizz.

How the flavour moves

If there is a rim, sugar arrives before any liquid does, dry and granular on the lip. Then lemon, immediately and sharply. Orange opens the middle out about a second later — peel oil rather than juice, more bitter than sweet. The cognac surfaces last and lowest, and stays: the finish is dried fruit and oak with a warmth that goes down rather than across, and a small clean bitterness that resets the mouth. It ends drier than it starts. Across the glass the arc reverses as it warms, and by the last mouthful the cognac has moved to the front and the citrus has faded.

Serve it

Very cold and briefly. It leaves the shaker at close to minus 4°C with about a fifth of its volume as melted ice, and it warms fast in a wide shallow glass. Within ten minutes it tastes noticeably sweeter and more alcoholic, because warmth flattens the acid and lifts the spirit. Chill the coupe; it buys you several minutes.

Goes with

Salt, fat and bitterness. Salted almonds and olives. Hard aged cheese — comté, aged gouda — where the drink's acid cuts and its cognac echoes the nuttiness. Pâté and cornichons. It also sits unusually well beside dark chocolate and citrus desserts, which is a rare thing for a sour, because the orange liqueur bridges to them. Where it fails is against anything delicate: it flattens plain fish and most vegetables, and it is too dry to work with cream.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy to make, genuinely hard to balance. The technique is one shake and one strain. The difficulty is that this is three ingredients in a fixed ratio and the ratio is only right for a particular sweetness of orange liqueur and a particular sourness of lemon — so a sidecar made exactly to the numbers can still be wrong, and the fix is always to taste it before it goes in the glass.

Cost

Moderate to high per drink, because both of the large measures are expensive spirits. The cognac is the biggest outlay and the orange liqueur the second, and neither has a cheap version that does not show. Against that, a bottle of each makes a great many drinks and both are useful elsewhere.

Equipment

A shaker, a hawthorne strainer and a fine-mesh strainer for double-straining, a jigger — this drink is a ratio and eyeballing it is exactly how it goes wrong — a citrus squeezer, a saucer wide enough to lay a rim into, and a chilled coupe. Nothing specialised.

When to make it

Cold weather, and either end of a meal. It is not a drink for a hot afternoon — served up with no ice, it has about ten good minutes in it.

Best season

Lemons are best in winter, which happens to suit the drink. Otherwise none.

You know it is done when

The shaker frosts completely. In the glass the drink is a clear pale amber with a fine pale collar of bubbles from the shake that fades over the first thirty seconds. It should be bright and slightly hazy rather than cloudy — fresh lemon leaves a faint haze, and a completely clear sidecar has been made with bottled juice.

And it feels like

Taste it off the strainer before it goes in the glass. It should read as dry with a sour edge and a warm finish; if it reads as sweet at that point it will read as syrupy in the glass, and the only fix is more lemon and more cognac in proportion.

Food safety

Nothing raw. Worth noting the strength: 75ml of spirits and liqueur in a small glass with nothing but the shake to dilute it makes this one of the stronger drinks on the site.

Where it goes wrong

Sugaring the whole rim, and sugaring the inside of it, so that sugar falls into a drink that already has a liqueur sweetening it. Pouring by eye rather than measuring — this is a ratio drink and a heavy hand on the liqueur ruins it invisibly. Using bottled lemon juice. Under-shaking, which leaves it hot and harsh. And using an expensive old cognac, which is a waste rather than an upgrade: the delicate part of a VSOP or older is destroyed by citrus, and a decent VS or VSOP is the right tool.

If it does go wrong

Too sweet is the usual failure. Add lemon 3ml at a time and cognac 5ml at a time together — lemon alone makes it sharp and still sweet. Too sour: cut the lemon to 20ml next time rather than adding sugar, which muddies it. Harsh and hot: under-shaken, or not enough ice in the shaker. Thin and watery: over-shaken, or the ice was small and wet. Cloudy with bits in it: you skipped the fine strain, and ice shards will keep diluting the drink in the glass.

Making it ahead

It can be batched and it is one of the better candidates for it, because there is no carbonation and no perishable dairy. Mix the three in proportion, add about 20 per cent water to stand in for the shake, bottle it and keep it in the freezer; pour straight into a chilled coupe. It will hold for a couple of days before the lemon dulls, which is the limiting factor.

Keeping it

None.

Reheating

Not applicable.

Freezing

No.

Leftovers

None.

Scaling it

Two at a time in a standard shaker is comfortable. Beyond that, batch as above rather than shaking in sequence, since the first drink will be sitting for several minutes by the time the fourth is made.

Substitutions

Armagnac in place of cognac makes a rustier, more rustic drink that many people prefer; a good aged rum makes a Between the Sheets adjacent drink that is no longer a sidecar but is very good. Cointreau is the standard orange liqueur and its dryness is part of the balance — a sweeter curaçao or triple sec will need the measure cut, and Grand Marnier, which is cognac-based and much sweeter, makes a heavier drink that is closer to dessert. Lemon cannot be substituted; lime makes an entirely different and rather harsh drink.

Dietary swaps

Vegan, dairy-free, nut-free and gluten-free as written. There is no useful alcohol-free version — the drink is two spirits and a citrus, and removing the spirits leaves the citrus.

Shopping for it

Cognac at VS or VSOP level; anything older is money spent on subtlety that lemon will remove. Cointreau, or another genuinely dry triple sec. Unwaxed lemons if the peel is going anywhere near the glass, though here the twist is orange. Caster sugar rather than granulated for the rim — the finer crystals stick to a damp glass and coarse ones fall off into the drink.

Keeping the cost down

Buy a VS or VSOP cognac rather than anything older — the drink is genuinely better with a younger, brighter spirit, so this is a saving with no cost attached. If cognac is out of reach, a decent armagnac is often cheaper for the quality and makes a very good sidecar. The orange liqueur is the one place not to economise: the cheap triple secs are much sweeter and much less aromatic, and the whole balance is built around a dry one.

Sustainability

Nothing notable. The spirits are the footprint and they are used in small quantities.

Nutrition

Around 220 calories and roughly 2.2 UK units, which is a lot for 105ml. Almost all the calories are alcohol; the sugar contribution from the liqueur is small.

Worth it?

Worth it, and one of the best arguments for owning a bottle of cognac. It is a three-ingredient drink that tastes considerably more complicated than it is, it takes two minutes, and getting it right teaches you more about balancing a sour than any other drink on this site — because there is nothing in it to hide a mistake behind.

Where it comes from

Origin

Either Paris or London, in or shortly before 1922. Both cities have a long-standing claim and the two earliest printed sources point at London.

Also called

Sidecar throughout, in every language. The French use the English word.

Said out loud

As it looks. In France, 'seed-CAR'.

What the name means

A motorcycle sidecar. The story attached to it — an army officer who was driven to and from the bar in one — is told in more than one version with more than one nationality of officer, which is a fair indication of how well established it is.

History

1922 is the fixed point: the drink appears that year in both Robert Vermeire's Cocktails: How to Mix Them and Harry MacElhone's ABC of Mixing Cocktails, and both credit Pat MacGarry at Buck's Club in London. The Paris claim, attaching it to Harry's New York Bar, grew afterwards and is now at least as widely repeated. There is also a serious argument, made most prominently by the drinks historian David Wondrich, that the sidecar is a direct descendant of the Brandy Crusta — a New Orleans drink of the 1850s built on brandy, citrus and orange liqueur and served with a sugared rim. If that lineage holds, the sugared rim is not a later flourish at all but the last surviving piece of the older drink.

Why it matters

It is one of the small number of drinks that survived the whole twentieth century in continuous service, and it is the standard example of a brandy sour done well. In practice it has become the drink people order to find out whether a bar is any good, because it is impossible to hide behind: three ingredients, no dilution, no garnish doing any work.

When it is eaten

After dinner, or before it. It is a cold-weather drink by temperament even though nothing about it is warming in construction, and it is the classic thing to make with a bottle of cognac somebody was given at Christmas and does not otherwise drink.

The traditional way

Shaken and served up, always. The sugared rim divides opinion and has done for a century — Vermeire's 1922 version has none.

How it changed

The ratio, and it moved a long way. Early printings are equal parts of all three, which by modern taste is markedly sweet; the 2:1:1 build here is the twentieth-century correction and is now the default. The sugared rim went from unusual to standard to optional again. And the cognac has quietly got better: the drink was designed around a rougher spirit than most people would use now.

Regional variations

The equal-parts version is still called the English school and the 2:1:1 the French, which is confusing given that the earliest sources put the drink in London. Substituting the base spirit produces a family of related and separately named drinks rather than variations — an applejack version is a Star or a Honeymoon depending on the book, a rum version with a dash of gin is a Between the Sheets.

How this version differs

Only in the two places where the drink is usually left vague. The rim is specified as half and on the outside, which is what a working bar does and what most recipes do not say. And the orange liqueur is flagged as the variable to adjust rather than the lemon, because it is the ingredient whose sugar content differs most between brands.

Sources and credit

Vermeire and MacElhone, both 1922, both crediting Pat MacGarry of Buck's Club. The Brandy Crusta ancestry is David Wondrich's argument and is given here as an argument rather than a settled fact.

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