The Between the Sheets cocktail, with white rum, another spirit (either gin or brandy), Cointreau, and, usually, lemon juice, was—with its potent formula and its suggestive name—one of the signature cocktails of the Jazz Age, both in America and in Europe. Like many cocktails introduced at the time, there is an unusual degree of variation among the oldest recipes, whether because different bartenders took the name and added their own mixology or because of the adaptations imposed by American Prohibition. See Alexander Cocktail and White Lady.
The cocktail’s origin is unclear. In the 1950s, American bartender Johnny Brooks claimed he invented it while working at a speakeasy in New Rochelle, New York, but also admitted that others had claimed it. The New York newspaperman O. O. McIntyre mentioned in a 1931 column that it was a specialty of a particular New York speakeasy but declined to name it. It first appears in print in America in 1929, in Drawn from the Wood by Frank Shay; there, the recipe called for gin, Bacardi rum, and Cointreau. But when the recipe traveled to Europe, it was modified to become very similar to the Sidecar, with the gin being replaced by cognac and the addition of lemon juice. Harry Craddock was the first to publish this new version, in his Savoy Cocktail Book.
In 1934, Patrick Gavin Duffy mentioned the later recipe, but he marked it with an asterisk, indicating that he didn’t recommend it. His reasoning was that it combined two spirits in the same drink, and “drinking different strong liquors at one session often brings on sudden intoxication and sick headaches afterwards.” See Duffy, Patrick Gavin. Such drinks were relatively uncommon at the time, at least outside the world of punch (where cognac and rum had been happily mixed together since the 1700s). Today, Duffy’s taboo is no longer respected, but this has still not brought the Between the Sheets back into common use.
Recipe: Shake 45 ml white rum, 45 ml cognac, 45 ml Cointreau and 45ml fresh lemon juice. Strain. Garnish with twist of orange peel.
See also Sidecar.
Brooks, Johnny. My 35 Years Behind Bars. New York: Exposition, 1954.
Duffy, Patrick Gavin. The Official Mixer’s Manual. New York: Long & Smith, 1934.
McIntyre, O. O. “New York Day by Day.” Akron Beacon-Journal, October 3, 1930, 4.
Shay, Frank. Drawn from the Wood. New York: Macaulay, 1929.
By: Fernando Castellon