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Powders, Lemondade, Effervescing
Take one pound of powdered white sugar, a quarter of a pound of bicarbonate of soda, and one and a half drachms of essence of lemon. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and divide them between six dozen papers. Take five ounces of tartaric or citric acid, and divide it between the same number of white papers. Use as in the case of Ginger Beer Powders (see POWDERS, GINGER BEER).
A two-part fizzing powder of the kind chemists once folded into paper packets: one paper of sweetened alkali, one of acid, combined only in the glass. The whole thing hinges on keeping the two apart and bone dry until serving.
- The hinge: two papers, never oneThe soda mixture and the acid must be packeted separately. Any moisture that reaches a combined powder sets off the reaction in storage and you are left with flat, faintly salty sugar.
- DrachmsAn apothecaries' drachm is one-eighth of an ounce; as a fluid measure it is about 3.5 ml (imperial). One and a half drachms of essence of lemon is therefore roughly a teaspoon, if it is to be read as a volume — the recipe does not say whether weight or fluid measure is intended.
- Essence of lemonThis was lemon oil dissolved in spirit, close to modern lemon extract. Rub it into a little of the sugar with your fingertips first, then work that scented sugar through the rest, or the oil beads and the packets scent unevenly.
- Bicarbonate of sodaSame product as today's baking soda. Sift it before mixing — it cakes, and a lump in one paper means an under-dosed neighbour.
- Tartaric or citric acidBoth are still sold, citric usually the cheaper. Five ounces of acid against the four ounces of soda leaves the acid in excess, so the drink should finish tart rather than soapy.
- PortionsSix dozen doses, so roughly 8 g of the sugar-and-soda mixture — a couple of teaspoons — and about 2 g, a scant half teaspoon, of acid each. Any kitchen scale will divide the batch more evenly than eyeballing seventy-two papers.
- ServingDissolve the sweetened soda in a tumbler of cold water, stir in the acid, and drink at once while it is still working. The fizz is spent within a minute or two.
- StorageGlass jars with tight lids, kept dry and dark. The papers were a shop convenience; humidity is the only real enemy, and folded paper offers it no resistance.
Effervescing powders sat on the border between the chemist's shop and the kitchen. The nineteenth century's enthusiasm for artificial mineral waters and "soda water" produced a whole family of dry powders that reproduced the fizz at home, of which the best known was the Seidlitz powder, dispensed as a blue paper of alkali and a white paper of tartaric acid to be mixed in the glass. Cassell's, a household encyclopaedia rather than a pharmacopoeia, uses the same format, dividing the acid into "white papers". Sugar and lemon oil turned the medicinal original into a soft drink, and recipes like this one gave families a cheap standing supply of lemonade at a time when bottled aerated waters were still a paid-for luxury.