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Lemonade for Invalids
Squeeze the juice out of a fine lemon. Strain it, put it with a quarter of the rind and three or four lumps of loaf sugar into a jug, and pour over it a pint of boiling water. Cover closely, and let the lemonade stand for two hours. At the end of that time strain, and it will be ready for use. Lemonade for invalids should be made with boiling water, as the unhealthy properties of the lemon are thus destroyed. A small quantity only of sugar should be put in, unless a desire to the contrary is expressed, as the acidity will most likely be agreeable. Probable cost, 2d. Sufficient for a pint of lemonade.
A hot infusion rather than a shaken cold drink, and the method matters: the peel steeps in boiling water long enough to give oil and aroma without bitterness. A few notes before you make it.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken into lumps with nippers. Lump size varied, but three or four lumps is on the order of three to four teaspoons of granulated sugar, which is deliberately restrained; the book says the acidity 'will most likely be agreeable'.
- A pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so about 568 ml rather than the US 473 ml. With the juice of one lemon this gives a mild, tea-strength drink.
- A quarter of the rindPare it thinly with a peeler and leave the white pith behind. Pith steeped for two hours in hot water turns the whole jug bitter, which is the one thing that will spoil this.
- Cover closelyThe lid is not decoration. It keeps the volatile lemon oils in the jug instead of letting them escape with the steam, and it keeps the drink warm through the infusion.
- The two hoursAt the end of two hours the lemonade will be tepid at best. Strain it and serve at room temperature, or chill it; reheating after the peel is removed does no harm.
- On the "unhealthy properties"Boiling water does nothing of the kind. Raw lemon juice is not harmful, and the heat in fact degrades some of its vitamin C. Treat the instruction as period medical belief rather than as a reason to avoid a cold-mixed lemonade.
- YieldOne pint, as the book states.
Sickroom cookery occupied a substantial chapter in many Victorian household manuals, because nursing was done at home and the cook was expected to produce beef tea, gruel, barley water and lemonade on the doctor's instruction. Lemonade of this kind belongs with barley water and the various "cooling drinks": lemons were valued for the acidity itself, which was thought to quench feverish thirst better than plain water, and diluted citrus had a long-established reputation in British medicine from the naval scurvy trials of the eighteenth century onward. The insistence that boiling water destroys the lemon's "unhealthy properties" reflects a widespread pre-bacteriological unease about raw fruit, which was often blamed for summer diarrhoea and cholera; boiling was the right precaution for the wrong reason, since the real risk lay in the water and the handling rather than in the fruit. The costing at twopence follows the "probable cost" formula consistent with Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, though the page itself names no book, and such figures let a mistress check her housekeeping accounts against them.