We continue to acquaint you with the classics of the International Bartenders Association. Today we have a Sidecar cocktail, which is perhaps one of the best mixed drinks based on cognac (French brandy). Of course, Brandy Alexander can compete with him for this title, but he is female, whatever one may say. The sidecar is dry, with a masculine character, but not devoid of grace and fine taste. In addition, this is a classic sour (sour), and to be precise, a New Orleans sour (New Orleans Sours). And we believe that there can be no bad cocktails among sours, because this is the same taste ideal: the bitterness of a noble drink, the sourness of citrus fruits and the sweetness of liquor.
Cocktail recipe Sidecar
This cocktail has a classic composition for sours. By analogy with Whiskey Sour: the main alcohol (cognac), sweetener (liquor) and acidifier (lemon juice). The International Bartending Association (IBA) offers the following recipe:
- 50 ml brandy;
- 20 ml Triple Sec liqueur;
- 20 ml of lemon juice.
Shake all ingredients in a shaker with plenty of ice and strain through a strainer into a cocktail glass. The glass can be preliminarily decorated with sugar crunch: moisten the edges of the glass with lemon juice and dip it in sugar. A twist of lemon or orange zest is also suitable as a decoration.
The IBA website offers a variant of the so-called English school cocktail, when all the ingredients are mixed in completely different proportions with the main alcohol predominating. There is also the French school, which assumes an equal amount of all ingredients. The English style has become popular for a reason: if Sidecar is made from equal proportions of all components, then lemon begins to dominate in it and not everyone likes excessive sourness. However, the ratio of 5:2:2 is also far from ideal. Eminent imbibers offer to mix a cocktail in a ratio of 2: 1: 1, which was first proposed by Harry Kredok in 1930.
The subtleties of the choice of ingredients and decorations:
- Cognac – exactly cognac, and not any aged brandy. That is, it is important to use Appellation d’Origine Controlee, an authentic cognac made in the “desired” province. No Georgian bourbons. The simplest solution is the Hennessy VSOP.
- Orange liquor – the original here is Cointreau, the most popular triple sec in the world. You can use other liqueurs, for example, aged Grand Marnier, but it will be a completely different cocktail. The neutral option is always Triple Sec of DK.
- Lemon juice – it must be fresh and in no case a preservative with chemical additives. Lime juice as a substitute is not suitable here.
- Decoration – often the side car is decorated with a sugar edge, while it is not only a decoration, but also affects the taste. If you doubt that your client likes sweets, apply the crunch to only half of the glass. Also, the glass can be decorated with a curl of lemon or orange, thereby directing the aroma of the cocktail towards the citrus liqueur.
History of Sidecar
The Sidecar, like other classic cocktails, has a history and a legend. According to legend, it was invented by a bartender in one of the bistros in Paris for his guest – a brave captain, a participant in the First World War. The name of the cocktail was due to the vehicle of the old warriors. He came on a motorcycle with a sidecar (presumably with a driver), overturned several sours with cognac and went home in the same sidecar, which in English is called Sidecar.
In the history of the cocktail, the exact name of this la petit bistro appears and the bartender who first mixed Sidecar. This bistro could be Harry’s Bar in Paris, opened in 1911 by Tod Sloan and owned by Harry McEllon since 1923, or the London lobby bar at the Ritz Hotel, now called the Hemingway Bar. But both options cannot be confirmed by chronology, since the first printed mention of the cocktail dates back to 1922, when its recipe was mentioned in two recipe books at once: ABC of Mixing Cocktails by Harry McEllon and Cocktails: How to Mix Them by Robert Vermeier.
The above sources attribute the authorship to a certain Pat McGarry, a bartender at the London Bucks Club. But both MacElon and Vermeier indicate equal proportions in the recipe, that is, the French school is involved here. Later, Harry McEllon even indicates himself as the author of Sidecar. Further, the cocktail appears in 1929 in the book Cocktails de Paris by an unknown author under the pseudonym RIP, and a year later in the famous Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Credock, where the recipe with a predominance of cognac, that is, the English style, appears for the first time. Even earlier, the cocktail was mentioned in various newspapers: in 1923 and 1928 in the Ohio Coshocton Tribune and in 1925 in The New Yorker.
But the sugar edge in print appeared only in 1934 and in three books at once: Drinks as they are mixed by Paul Emilius Lau (Lowe), Gordon’s Cocktail and Food Recipes by Harry Gerald Gordon and Complete Cocktail & Drinking Recipes by Herman Barney Burke (Burke).
The famous cocktail historian Dale DeGroff in his book The Essential Cocktail describes a very different theory of the origin of the Sidecar cocktail. According to him, the cocktail is not named after a motorcycle cradle, but after the slang bar word “sidecar”, meaning a small glass into which bartenders pour excess prepared cocktails.
Famous variations of the Sidecar cocktail
There are several. Very interesting is the Tangerine Sidecar, in which the Cointreau liqueur is replaced by the equally popular Belgian liqueur Mandarin Napoleon. No less interesting is the cocktail Between the Sheets (Between the Sheets) – Sidecar components and white rum are mixed in equal proportions. It is logical to replace cognac with another noble aged drink. This is how Rum Sidecar was born, which should be made with aged Havana Club 7 rum.
In 1948, in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, David Embury gives his version of the origin of Sidecar:
This cocktail is an excellent example, known to me, of how a great drink was spoiled. It was opened by a former friend of mine in a bar in Paris during the First World War, and was named after the motorcycle sidecar that the captain came and went drinking in the little bistro where the drink was born and where it was given its name. In fact, it contained only six or seven ingredients instead of three, as is now printed in almost all prescription books.
This refers to the Brandy Crusta cocktail (Brandy Crust), as the predecessor of Sidecar. Here is one of his recipes, described in Kredok’s The Savoy Cocktail Book:
- 3 dashes of maraschino liqueur;
- 1 desh bittera Angostura;
- 4 dashes of freshly squeezed lemon juice;
- 15 ml curacao liqueur;
- 45 ml brandy.
Stir all ingredients with plenty of ice and strain into prepared glass. To prepare the glass, cut a wide and long strip of lemon peel (from about half a lemon), apply a sugar rim to the glass, and wrap the rim of the glass with the peel from the inside.
No, this cocktail is not similar to Sidecar, but there is a genetic link.