Between the Sheets

A 1930s classic from Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book: cognac and rum shaken with Cointreau and lemon juice in a sour-style riff on the Sidecar.

Between the Sheets is a 1930s cocktail combining cognac, white rum, Cointreau, and lemon juice — a close structural relative of the Sidecar that adds rum as a second base spirit. The drink appears in Harry Craddock's The Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), the most authoritative cocktail manual of the inter-war period, published during Craddock's tenure as head bartender at the American Bar in the Savoy Hotel in London. Harry MacElhone of Harry's New York Bar in Paris is sometimes credited as the creator, though the attribution is not definitive. The cocktail's structure mirrors the Sidecar exactly — base spirit, orange liqueur, citrus — with the addition of rum splitting the spirit base between cognac and white rum, each contributing different character: cognac's grape-distillate stone fruit and barrel warmth alongside rum's cane-sugar sweetness and tropical lightness. The provocative name was a deliberate commercial choice, as suggestive cocktail names were fashionable in inter-war European bar culture — the same naming convention that also produced the Hanky Panky, the Corpse Reviver, and similar memorably-titled drinks of the 1920s and 1930s. Between the Sheets survived the mid-century's cocktail conservatism and was recovered by the craft cocktail revival, appearing on contemporary menus as evidence that the cognac-rum combination is as coherent as it is unexpected.