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Lemon Syrup
Boil six ounces of sugar in a pint of water until it is dissolved. Let it cool, then add a quarter of a pint of lemon-juice and half a drachm of essence of lemon. Mix thoroughly, and bottle for use. Time, a quarter of an hour to boil the syrup. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient, two table-spoonfuls of syrup to a tumblerful of cold water.
A Victorian lemonade concentrate, closer to a thin cordial than a modern syrup. The low proportion of sugar is the thing to watch: it will not keep at room temperature the way a heavy syrup does.
- The measurementsAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz (about 2 1/2 US cups); a quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz, roughly the juice of three or four lemons. Six ounces of sugar is a scant cup, which by modern standards is a very light syrup indeed.
- Half a drachmA fluid drachm is one eighth of a fluid ounce, so half a drachm is about 1.8 ml, a generous third of a teaspoon. If the book intends the apothecaries' weight drachm instead it would be about 1.9 g, which for a liquid essence comes out at much the same amount.
- Essence of lemonIn Cassell's day this meant lemon oil pressed from the peel, cut with alcohol. Modern lemon extract is a reasonable stand-in but strengths vary widely, so add it a few drops at a time and taste. The zest of two lemons steeped in the hot syrup and strained out gives a cleaner result.
- The quarter-hour boilSugar dissolves in well under a minute. The recipe gives no reason for the fifteen minutes; it presumably reduces the water a little and scalds the syrup before bottling rather than aiming at caramel. Keep it at a bare simmer and do not let it colour.
- Add the juice off the heatAs written, and worth following. Boiled lemon juice loses its fresh top notes and turns faintly cooked; the same is true of the essence, whose aromatics flash off in steam.
- Keeping itWith this little sugar the syrup is not shelf-stable. Bottle it, refrigerate, and use within a couple of weeks. Cloudiness or any fizz means it has begun to ferment.
- Yield and useAbout 1 1/4 imperial pints of syrup, which at two tablespoons per tumbler makes something like twenty glasses. It also does well over soda water, or spooned over a sponge pudding.
Lemon syrup belongs to a whole family of Victorian household cordials — raspberry vinegar, orgeat, ginger beer syrup — kept bottled in the larder so that a cold drink could be made without ice or fresh fruit on hand. Diluted with water it served as a temperance beverage and was commonly recommended as a sick-room drink, lemon being long held to be cooling in a fever. The "essence of lemon" it calls for was a commercial product of the mid-century flavouring trade, lemon oil expressed from the peel and dissolved in spirit, sold by chemists and grocers alongside essence of almond and vanilla. The stated cost of eightpence is a reminder that lemons were imported and not cheap; a syrup stretched a few of them across many glasses.