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Lemonade Syrup
Rub the yellow rind of six lemons upon a pound of loaf sugar. Moisten it with half a pint of water, and stir over the fire until the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is quite clear, then draw the saucepan to the side of the fire, add the strained juice of twelve lemons, and simmer gently for two or three minutes, but the syrup must not boil after the juice is added. Bottle at once, and when cold cork closely. Time, an hour to prepare. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient, mix a table-spoonful of the syrup with half a tumblerful of water.
A concentrated lemon cordial built on the old confectioner's trick of rubbing sugar against the peel to capture the oil. Two details carry the whole thing: get the zest oil into the sugar, and keep the juice off the boil.
- Rubbing the rindLoaf sugar came in hard cones, and a lump dragged across a lemon abraded the peel and absorbed the oil, giving what bartenders now call oleo-saccharum. With granulated sugar, zest the lemons finely instead and work the zest into the sugar with your fingers, then leave it half an hour before adding water.
- Loaf sugarA pound of loaf sugar is a pound of ordinary white sugar, roughly 2¼ cups granulated. Nothing about the crystal size matters once it dissolves.
- Half a pint of waterAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 285 ml. Slightly more or less only shifts how thick the finished syrup is.
- Never boil after the juice goes inThis is the hinge. Boiled lemon juice loses its volatile aromatics fast and turns flat and faintly cooked; the two or three minutes of bare simmering is only to warm and marry, not to reduce.
- "Draw the saucepan to the side of the fire"On a range, that meant moving the pan off the hottest plate to a cooler part. On a modern hob, take it off the heat entirely and let it drop below a simmer before the juice goes in.
- Bottling and keepingThis is a hot-filled acidic syrup, not a processed preserve. Use scalded bottles, cork or cap when cold as directed, and treat it as a refrigerator item good for a few weeks rather than a pantry staple.
- Yield and dilutionTwelve lemons and a pound of sugar give roughly 900 ml to a litre of syrup, on the order of sixty tablespoon servings. A tablespoon to half a tumbler of water is a modest drink by current tastes; adjust upward freely, and it takes sparkling water and ice as happily as still.
- TimingThe stated hour is mostly zesting, rubbing and juicing twelve lemons by hand. The stove work is under ten minutes.
Lemonade syrups belong to the Victorian household's stock of "made drinks" — cordials, shrubs and barley waters kept bottled in the larder so that a cool drink could be produced without sending out for anything. Cassell's prices this at 1s. 6d. The rubbing of sugar on peel is much older than the book: confectioners and punch-makers had used it for well over a century, on the sound principle that the fragrant oil sits in the coloured zest and dissolves into sugar far better than into water. The instruction to keep the white pith out of it, implicit in "the yellow rind," is the same advice given today.