The Sidecar

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 The Sidecar.

Cocktail Codex, written by the key players at the famous Manhattan bar Death & Co., maintains that there are only six cocktails: the Old-Fashioned, the Martini, the Daiquiri, the Whisky Highball, the Flip, and yes, the Sidecar. All others are simply variants on these “root recipes.”
The Codex recipe for the Sidecar was so tart that I won’t bother reprinting it. But this version was terrific….
Here are the ingredients:
1 1/2 oz. cognac
1 oz. dry curaçao
1/2 oz. lemon juice
First, you’ll want to take a coupe glass (preferably) and put it in the freezer until it is well chilled.
Then remove the glass, rub the rim with a lemon wedge, and place the glass upside down on a plate dusted with a thin layer of sugar. Technically this is optional but I wouldn’t do it any other way. After that, briefly return the glass to the freezer while you build the drink.
Pour the ingredients in a mixing tin, fill the tin with ice, and shake for 6 to 10 seconds. You want to get the liquid as cold as possible as fast as possible.
Then, double strain the liquid into the coupe glass. That is, use a Hawthorne strainer to block most of the ice and a mesh strainer to catch any tiny ice shards.
Lastly, garnish with an orange twist.
The result is perfection. When experimenting with a new cocktail, I usually have only one (and sometimes just enough to get a sense of how it tastes). In this case, I had a second Sidecar pretty much right away and, a discreet two hours later, a third.
The Sidecar was supposedly invented by an Army captain in World War I, who rode around Paris in the sidecar of a motorcycle. Yeah, I don’t believe that, either. But the drink does go back to that period: it appears in a 1922 cocktail book (the recipe in it is atrocious, by the way).
As for relatives of the Sidecar, according to Cocktail Codex, these include the Cosmopolitan, Margarita, and Long Island Iced Tea. For the rationales behind these selections—which do make considerable sense—you’ll need to consult the book.
In the meantime, you can build a Sidecar and see what you think.

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