Lemon Syrup
Take the juice of twelve lemons, grate the rind of six in it, let it stand over night, then take six pounds of white sugar, and make a thick syrup. When it is quite cool, strain the juice into it, and squeeze as much oil from the grated rind as will suit the taste. A table-spoonful in a goblet of water will make a delicious drink on a hot day, far superior to that prepared from the stuff commonly sold as lemon syrup.--Miss Abbie G. Backus, West Killingly, Conn.
A lemon cordial in the old style: juice and zest macerated overnight, then let down into a heavy sugar syrup. The proportions are generous but the water quantity is left to the cook, which is the one thing worth settling before you start.
- "Make a thick syrup" — the missing measureThe original gives no water. Cook the sugar with just enough water to dissolve it, over heat and only until clear; if you want a figure, a heavy syrup of about 2 parts sugar to 1 part water by weight comes to roughly 6 cups of water for 6 lb of sugar. More water than that and the finished syrup will be thinner and less stable.
- Lemon yieldLemon size varies, so go by volume rather than count — expect roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of juice from a dozen modern lemons, and make up the difference if you are short.
- Cool before combiningThis is the hinge. Straining the juice into hot syrup drives off the fresh top notes and dulls the flavour to something closer to the commercial product she is complaining about. Let the syrup come fully to room temperature first.
- Grated rind and "oil"Standing overnight draws flavouring oil out of the zest — comparable to oleo saccharum, though that works by sugar rather than by acid. "Squeeze as much oil from the grated rind" presumably means pressing the macerated gratings in cloth to recover the oil-laden juice; add it a little at a time and taste, since zest oil turns bitter fast.
- Unwaxed fruitSupermarket lemons are usually waxed and often treated with a fungicide. Scrub in warm water before grating, or buy unwaxed, since the rind is doing most of the flavouring here.
- Keeping itThere is no preservative beyond sugar, and the fresh juice carries yeasts. Bottle in scalded jars, refrigerate, and use within a month or two; discard at the first sign of fizz, cloudiness or mould. Freezing in small containers works well.
- Yield and strengthExpect somewhere in the region of 3 quarts of syrup. A tablespoon in a goblet of water is a light drink by modern taste — 2 to 3 tablespoons makes lemonade most people would recognise, and the syrup is also good over soda water or in iced tea.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) was assembled from contributions solicited from women across the Midwest and East, each printed with her name and town, and Miss Backus of West Killingly, Connecticut, is typical of that method — the book reads as a network of households rather than one author. Her parting shot at "the stuff commonly sold as lemon syrup" was well aimed: commercial lemon syrups and "lemonade powders" of the 1870s were frequently built from citric or tartaric acid and a manufactured lemon essence, with little or no actual fruit, and adulteration of flavouring extracts was a standing complaint decades before federal food laws addressed it. Home-bottled fruit syrups were the sensible answer in a house with no refrigeration: a heavy sugar syrup was among the few reliable ways to hold summer flavour, and the technique of steeping zest with juice overnight is one this recipe shares with the older family of shrubs and cordials.