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Imperial Drink
Put half an ounce of cream of tartar into a large jug, which should be well heated first; add the rind of a large lemon, a quarter of a pound of lump sugar, and about three pints of boiling water from the kettle. Cover closely, and let the jug stand near the fire for an hour or so. Stir the liquid occasionally while hot, and when quite cold and clear, pour off from the sediment. This is a cooling and pleasant drink for the summer. Probable cost, 3d.
A cream-of-tartar lemonade of the sickroom-and-summer type, made by infusion rather than boiling. Nothing here is difficult, but the quantities are imperial and the straining step is the whole point.
- The measuresHalf an ounce of cream of tartar is 14 g, roughly 4 to 5 teaspoons; a quarter pound of lump sugar is 4 oz (115 g). Three imperial pints is 60 fl oz, roughly 1.7 litres or 7 US cups.
- Lump sugarNineteenth-century lump sugar was cut from a loaf and is simply white sugar. Granulated dissolves faster in the hot infusion and behaves identically here.
- Pare the rind thinlyTake the yellow zest only, in strips, with a peeler. Any white pith steeped for an hour will turn the finished drink bitter, and the recipe gives no chance to correct it.
- Heat the jugThe instruction to warm the vessel first is not decorative. Three pints of boiling water into a cold pottery or glass jug risks cracking it, and the sudden drop in temperature slows the extraction of the oils from the rind.
- Why it must settleCream of tartar (potassium bitartrate) is only sparingly soluble in cold water, so as the jug cools some of it drops out as a gritty white sediment. Decanting carefully off that deposit is what separates a pleasant tart drink from a chalky one.
- Do not stir once coldStir while hot to dissolve, then leave it strictly alone. Disturbing the jug after it has cleared puts the sediment back into suspension and it must be left to settle again.
- Yield and keepingAbout 1.7 litres, enough for six tumblers. Refrigerate after decanting and drink within a day or two; there is no preservative beyond the sugar and the mild acidity.
- ModerationCream of tartar in quantity is a laxative and contributes a real potassium load. A glass or two is the intended dose, not the jug at a sitting.
- That 3d.The "probable cost" was a standard note for household budgeting in works of this kind, and the figure given here is a very low one.
"Imperial" was the standing English name for a cooling drink of cream of tartar, sugar and lemon peel, often said to be borrowed from the French impériale of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pharmacy, where acidulated potassium bitartrate solutions were prescribed as refrigerant and mildly diuretic draughts for fevers. It belongs with barley water, whey and toast water in the invalid-cookery tradition, and like them it drifted out of the sickroom and onto the summer sideboard as ice and cheap sugar became ordinary. Cream of tartar reached the kitchen as a by-product of winemaking, scraped as argol from the insides of casks and refined; by Cassell's day it was a cheap grocer's staple, sold chiefly for raising bread with bicarbonate of soda.