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Powders, Lemonade
Take four pounds of white sugar, powdered, an ounce and a half of citric or tartaric acid, and a quarter of an ounce of essence of lemon. Mix well, and bottle for use. To make a glass of lemonade, take one to two dessert-spoonfuls of the powder.
A dry lemonade concentrate of the sort Victorian households kept bottled for summer. It works as written, provided the acid and the oil are food grade and the sugar is fine enough to dissolve quickly.
- The measurements in metricFour pounds of sugar is about 1.8 kg; an ounce and a half of acid is roughly 42 g; a quarter ounce of essence is about 7 g, or a little under two teaspoons. At the dose given the batch runs to well over a hundred glasses, i.e. tens of litres of finished drink.
- Powdered white sugarThis means sugar ground fine, not modern icing/confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and will cloud the glass. Caster sugar is the closest match; ordinary granulated sugar works but dissolves more slowly in cold water.
- Citric or tartaric acidBoth are still sold, usually in the canning or home-brewing aisle, and both are food safe. Citric gives the rounder lemon note; tartaric is sharper and slightly more astringent. Buy food grade, not the technical grade sold for descaling.
- Essence of lemonIn this period the term generally meant lemon oil expressed from the peel, sometimes cut with alcohol. Modern pure lemon oil is far more concentrated than supermarket lemon extract, so start with half the quantity, taste a made-up glass, and adjust.
- Getting the oil evenly through the sugarThis is the hinge. Drip the essence onto a small portion of the sugar, rub it through with your fingers or a spoon until no damp clumps remain, then blend that portion into the rest. Poured straight into four pounds of sugar it will sit in pockets and the first glasses will be overpowering.
- Keeping it dryCitric acid is hygroscopic and the powder will cake if the jar breathes. Store in a properly sealed glass jar out of the light; kept dry it holds for months, though the lemon oil fades with time.
- Strength of the finished glassA dessert-spoon is about two teaspoons, so one to two per glass. In a 250 ml glass of cold water one spoonful gives a light lemonade; adjust upwards to taste. Sparkling water works as well as still.
Lemonade powders belong to the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for shelf-stable domestic conveniences, alongside baking powders, custard powders and blancmange powders — all built on the same idea that a household could keep the dry components of a dish or drink ready-mixed and add only water. Citric acid, isolated from lemon juice in the eighteenth century and manufactured on an industrial scale from imported Italian citrus by the Victorian period, made it possible to bottle the sourness of a lemon without the fruit; the essence supplied the smell, which is most of what the drinker actually registers as lemon. It is a store-cupboard preparation of the kind a cook made once and drew on all summer, at a time when ice and fresh fruit were both unreliable luxuries in an ordinary kitchen. Commercial versions were sold in packets and in effervescent form, with bicarbonate of soda added to fizz on contact with water; this domestic version leaves that out and relies on the drinker's own aerated water if any sparkle is wanted.