Home › Preserving, Drying and Canning Fruit › Syrup of Lemons
Syrup of Lemons
Clarify three pounds lump sugar; then pour into this, while at weak candy height and boiling, the juice of eighteen lemons, and the peel of three, grated. Boil together four minutes, strain through lawn and bottle. When cold, cork tight for use. This syrup is then ready for lemonade, punch, ices, jellies, etc.
XIV. Brandy Peaches and Other Brandied Fruits.
ALL the stone fruits, and also strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are sometimes preserved in brandy. Choke cherries, and other wild cherries, and any of the small fruits, are also preserved, by filling a vessel, that may be sealed tight, with the fruit, and filling up with brandy, or equal parts of strong proof spirits, and soft filtered water. The liquid is then used, properly diluted, as a warming medicine or stomachic. When preserved by heat and by the addition of brandy, the following recipe for peaches will apply to the preserving of all stone fruits with brandy as one of the preservative integers:
A concentrated lemon cordial base built on a boiled sugar syrup rather than a cold-mixed one. The heat is brief by design; the point is to dissolve and set the syrup, not to cook the juice.
- The hinge: four minutes and no moreOnce the juice goes in, the boil is short because prolonged heat drives off the fresh lemon aroma and leaves a flat, cooked-marmalade note. Have the strainer and bottles ready before the juice hits the pan.
- "Weak candy height"Old sugar-boiling names are not precise, and period sources disagree about where "candy height" falls in the sequence of sugar degrees. Treat the phrase as approximate rather than converting it to a single temperature.
- Clarifying the sugarPeriod practice was to whisk a beaten egg white into the dissolved sugar, bring it up, and skim off the grey scum that carries the impurities. Modern refined sugar needs none of this; dissolve the 3 lb sugar in just enough water to make a syrup and skim any foam.
- Lump sugarSugar was sold as a hard cone or loaf and broken into lumps. Ordinary granulated sugar is a direct substitute by weight.
- Eighteen lemonsLemon size varies a good deal, so measure rather than count: expect roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups of juice.
- Peel of three, gratedTake only the yellow zest. Any white pith carried into the syrup turns it bitter, and the bitterness intensifies as the syrup keeps.
- Strain through lawnLawn is a fine plain-weave linen. Doubled muslin, a jelly bag, or a coffee filter does the same job; the aim is to catch the zest and pulp so the bottled syrup stays clear.
- Bottling and keepingCorking cold bottles is not a sterilising step. The sugar concentration and acidity give reasonable protection, but store this in the refrigerator in scalded bottles and use it within a couple of months.
- YieldFor lemonade, figure roughly one part syrup to five or six parts cold water and adjust.
- The trailing paragraphThe text about brandied peaches and wild cherries is the beginning of the next entry in the book, printed here without a break. It belongs to a separate recipe and is not part of the lemon syrup.
Lemon syrup of this kind was a staple of the well-run pantry before commercial cordials and reliable refrigeration, and the reason is plain: it is a way of holding a perishable imported fruit through the year. Lemons came into the kitchen as a bought luxury, and a cook turned them into something that would keep. The syrup then did duty across the whole household repertoire the recipe lists lemonade, punch, ices and jellies. Closely related preparations run through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books under names like lemon shrub, and the technique of boiling sugar to a named stage by eye, before thermometers were common in domestic kitchens, is the same skill that underpinned all confectionery of the period.