Buttery Nipple Shot

Butterscotch schnapps and Baileys — the 1980s playfully named category, DeKuyper (founded 1695) establishing the schnapps, Baileys (1974) the first Irish cream.

The Buttery Nipple belongs to the wave of playfully named two-ingredient shots that became a fixture of American bar culture in the 1980s, when the novelty of provocative cocktail names proved as commercially effective as the flavors they described. The drink is the simpler cousin of the Slippery Nipple — which adds a central drop of grenadine — and the basic formula has remained consistent: butterscotch schnapps layered with Irish cream, served in a shot glass with the lighter Irish cream floating on top of the denser schnapps. Butterscotch schnapps as a distinct commercial category emerged in the 1980s alongside the broader flavored schnapps market that followed the success of products like peach schnapps and peppermint schnapps. DeKuyper, the Dutch spirits company founded in 1695 and operating as a major American schnapps importer and producer through the 20th century, helped establish butterscotch schnapps as a standard bar ingredient. Baileys Irish Cream, introduced in Ireland in 1974 by Gilbeys of Ireland as the first commercially produced Irish cream liqueur, provided the other essential half. The Buttery Nipple's flavor profile is entirely dessert-forward: butterscotch's cooked butter and brown sugar sweetness combined with Irish cream's whiskey-and-dairy richness creates something closer to a liquid confection than a cocktail, and that accessibility is precisely what made the shot so effective at parties and for drinkers who found straight spirits too challenging.