ClassicsFall

Sidecar

Credited to Pat MacGarry, Buck's Club, London, by 1922

The Sidecar is cognac, dry curaçao and lemon, shaken and served up. Cognac brings dried fruit and oak, the curaçao adds bitter orange, and lemon keeps it lively. It drinks like an after-dinner brandy with the lights turned up, which makes it a natural fit for Thanksgiving week.

  • GlassCoupe
  • MethodShaken
  • Ingredients4
Sidecar

Ingredients

Making a batch?
Servings
Optional sugared rimGarnish
Total volume—

Directions

  1. Shake all ingredients with ice.
  2. Double strain into a chilled coupe.

ToolsJiggerShakerHawthorne strainerFine strainerCoupe glass

Don't have these? Build a drink from your shelf →

History

The Sidecar first appears in print in 1922, in Harry MacElhone's ABC of Mixing Cocktails and Robert Vermeire's Cocktails: How to Mix Them. Both credit Pat MacGarry, the bartender at Buck's Club in London, though the Ritz in Paris also claims it. The story of an American army captain who arrived in a motorcycle sidecar comes from a 1948 book and is impossible to prove.

Making a batch? Scale it for a crowd, add dilution water, and see how many bottles to buy.
Quick sizes
How are you making it? ⓘ Batching includes dilution water. Pre-batched cocktails need added water to replace the melt from stirring or shaking. We use Jeffrey Morgenthaler's standard: 18% for spirit-forward drinks, 25% for shaken.

What you'll need to buy

Based on 750ml bottles (25.4 oz), rounded up.

Bottle math, generally

750ml bottle25.4 oz
2 oz pours per bottle12 cocktails
1.5 oz pours per bottle16 cocktails
1 oz =29.6 ml
This recipe per 750ml of spirit—

Don't have these bottles? Work with what you've got.

Tell the Cocktail Creator what's on your shelf and what mood you're in — it'll show you every drink you can make tonight.

Open the Cocktail Creator →