Wet Pussy

Irish cream and butterscotch schnapps in a sweet layered shot — the provocative novelty name does the ordering work; the flavor is mild, caramel-sweet dessert.

The Wet Pussy shot is a layered dessert shooter in the Irish cream-over-butterscotch schnapps format that belongs to the same family of suggestively named American bar novelties as the Buttery Nipple, Slippery Nipple, and Blow Job. The category of provocatively named cocktails and shots became commercially fashionable in American bar culture from the mid-1980s onward, when bar owners recognized that memorable, taboo-referencing names drove repeat ordering through social humor — particularly in the mixed-gender casual bar settings that expanded significantly through the 1980s as women's participation in American nightlife and bar culture increased. The drink's actual flavor — Baileys Original Irish Cream floated on butterscotch schnapps — is thoroughly approachable and sweet, delivering a caramel-and-dairy combination that bears no relationship to its name's implication. Baileys Original Irish Cream, launched in 1974 as the world's first commercially stable cream liqueur, and DeKuyper Buttershots, launched in 1993 as the most commercially successful butterscotch schnapps in the American market, both achieved their commercial peaks in the 1990s, making the combination a natural product of two of the decade's most successful liqueur categories.