ENDANGERED COCKTAIL OF THE MONTH-BETWEEN THE SHEETS

By Pink Lady
With dry January officially over and the first Hallmark holiday of 2026, Valentine’s Day, on the horizon, now is the perfect time to dust off your cocktail shaker. There is no shortage of pink-hued and/or cheekily named drink recipes available at your fingertips via a quick google search to celebrate all things amore. If you’d like to keep it classy this Valentine’s Day (or Galentine’s Day) go for a Between the Sheets cocktail. The vintage recipe dates back to the 1920s and is easy to make with ingredients you can find stocked at any retailer, restaurant, or may already have on your home bar.

The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails describes the Between the Sheets as “one of the signature cocktails of the Jazz Age, both in America and Europe.” A recipe for the drink was first printed in Frank Shay’s 1929 book Drawn from Wood: Consolations in Words and Music for Pious Friends and Drunken Companions as a gin, Bacardi rum, Cointreau cocktail, with a cheeky recipe note: “make one for the lady too.” Of course, it was probably making the rounds at speakeasies and European bars before Shay put pen to paper.

European variations generally swap rum for brandy and added the welcome addition of lemon juice to the mix. Whether Americans used rum in the drink because Prohibition had made brandy scarce, or Europeans deployed brandy as their special riff on an American template, is unclear. The Difford’s Guide describes three different versions of the drink which have appeared in various cocktail books over the years, noting “I suspect each had its moment dominating the other in this order:
No.1 Dry gin + Light white rum + Triple sec + Lemon juice
No.2 Brandy + Dry gin + Triple sec + Lemon juice
No.3 Brandy + Light white rum + Triple sec + Lemon juice

I’ll share the version that Harry Craddock used for his 1930 manual The Savoy Cocktail Book, which seems to be the jumping off point for this cocktail with many American bartenders. However, experimenting with the formulas above would be a fantastic way to turn a R&D mixology session into a Valentine’s Day date night in experience

BETWEEN THE SHEETS

1 dash lemon juice
1/3 Brandy
1/3 Cointreau
1/3 Bacardi Rum

SHAKE well and STRAIN into a cocktail glass.

Cin cin!