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Orangeade or Lemonade
Pare the rind thinly from four oranges, and put the rind in a pitcher. Take off and throw away the white slice; then remove the seeds, put with the thin peelings, add an ounce of sugar and a quart of boiling water. Let it stand until cold, setting it on ice if necessary; or bottle and hang down the well. Lemonade is made in the same way by substituting lemons for oranges, and adding more sugar. For ordinary use, either is made by squeezing out the juice, with a squeezer, and adding sugar and ice-water.
XVI. Teas and Other Refreshing Drinks.
An infusion rather than a squeezed drink: the flavour comes from the oil in the zest, with the fruit itself added for body. The instructions are compressed to the point of ambiguity in one or two places.
- Read the sequence carefullyPare only the coloured zest, discard the bitter white pith ("the white slice"), then add the seeded fruit pulp to the pitcher along with the peelings. Both peel and flesh steep together in the water.
- An ounce of sugarRoughly 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar, which is barely sweet by current taste for a full quart. Lemons will need considerably more, as the recipe concedes; start at 3-4 ounces and adjust once the liquid is cold, since sweetness reads lower when chilled.
- Why boiling waterHeat draws the aromatic oil out of the zest far faster than cold water will. Pour the water over the peel, not the reverse, and leave it undisturbed until cool rather than stirring or bruising it.
- Steeping timeNo time is given because the drink is simply left until cold, which for a quart will take several hours at room temperature. The recipe does not say to strain, though straining off the peel at that point is sensible; long steeping is said to draw bitterness from the peel.
- "Hang down the well"A pre-refrigeration cooling method, the bottle lowered on a cord into the cool air above the water. The modern equivalent is a covered jug in the refrigerator.
- Oranges varyThe fruit available when this was written was likely smaller and sharper than a modern navel. Four large navels in a quart of water will give something quite mild; a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice at the end restores the edge without changing the character.
- YieldA quart, or four generous glasses. The "ordinary use" version at the end of the entry is simply juice, sugar and ice water, mixed to taste and drunk at once.
The technique of steeping pared zest in boiling water rather than merely squeezing juice appears in nineteenth-century household books, and it produces a fuller flavour because the fragrant oils sit in the peel, not the pulp. The instruction to bottle the drink and hang it down the well is a reminder of how recently domestic cooling depended on the shaft, the cellar or bought ice, and why the book bothers to add "setting it on ice if necessary" as an alternative.