I love a good retro cocktail.

Though, truth be told, some times I like just about any kind of cocktail. At Milk Tiger Lounge — where, let me tell you, they make a mean cocktail — I’m particularly prone to ordering the Champs-Élysées. Or, uh, several.

Ahem.

And sometimes I’ll order a Sidecar.

But, where the Champs-Élysées is made with ingredients I’m unlikely to ever have in my liquor cabinet — yellow chartreuse is a good example — those in the Sidecar are pretty standard: Cointreau, Cognac and lemon juice.

The thing I don’t usually have is, strangely, ice. My freezer sucks all the moisture out of it and leaves tiny, misshapen cubes with a disgusting aftertaste. So, I rarely make shaken cocktails at home, since it seems a bit silly to buy a giant bag of ice for a drink or two and then have it take up valuable space in my freezer. But I had friends over for dinner last weekend and I knew that gin and tonics would be in order and that would mean ice. And that meant some leftover ice. And that meant it was cocktail time.

Enter the Sidecar.

It’s tart, yet sweet, citrusy and smooth.

And it goes down dangerously easy. Please consider yourself warned.

Sidecar

• 3/4 ounce Cointreau
• 1 1/4 ounces Cognac
• 3/4 ounce lemon juice
• sugar and additional lemon juice for sugaring the rim

Rub the rim of the glass with lemon juice and then dip in sugar.

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, add the Cointreau, Cognac and lemon juice. Shake well and strain into prepared glass.