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Acidulated Lemonade
To three pints of boiling water add four ounces of fresh lemon-juice, half an ounce of thin lemon-peel freshly cut, and four ounces of finely-powdered loaf sugar. When cold, strain through a jelly-bag. If not wanted immediately, it must be bottled and carefully corked.
A plain sickroom-and-summer lemonade from the reference pages of Cassell's, given by weight as Victorian recipes usually are. The proportions work as written; the vocabulary is what needs translating.
- The measures are weightsThe measures -- Four ounces of lemon juice is about half a cup, roughly the juice of three medium lemons. Four ounces of sugar is a weight, about 115 g, or a little over half a cup of granulated sugar, not four fluid ounces by volume.
- Loaf sugarRefined white sugar sold as a hard cone to be broken up and crushed at home, which is why the recipe specifies it finely powdered. Ordinary granulated sugar is the same thing and dissolves in the boiling water without further work; caster sugar dissolves faster still.
- Thin lemon-peelHalf an ounce is the pared zest of about two lemons, taken with a peeler in strips with no white pith attached. Pith is the source of bitterness here, and the peel stays in the water the whole time it is cooling, so any pith attached will give up its bitterness.
- StrainingA jelly-bag is a fine flannel or muslin cone used for clarifying. A double layer of cheesecloth in a sieve, or a coffee filter if you want it very bright, does the same job.
- Bottling and keepingCorking a bottle of unpreserved lemonade is not preserving it. This has no heat process and little sugar; treat it as a fresh drink, refrigerate it, and use it within three or four days.
- YieldJust over three pints, or six generous glasses. It is deliberately sharp and lightly sweetened rather than syrupy, and can be diluted with still or sparkling water to taste.
Acidulated drinks were considered part of the domestic medicine chest as much as the drinks tray. Nineteenth-century household manuals recommended cooling acid drinks for fevers and for thirst in hot weather, and lemonade, barley water and imperial (a cream-of-tartar drink) appear again and again in nursing sections and invalid cookery. The phrase "acidulated" simply signals that the drink is sharpened with acid, in this case lemon juice rather than the tartaric or citric acid crystals that cheaper recipes of the period often used. The insistence on straining through a jelly-bag reflects a Victorian preference for perfect clarity in a glass, and the direction to cork any surplus is a reminder that a Victorian kitchen had a cool larder rather than refrigeration.