Orangeade
4 oranges 3 lemons 4 pounds white sugar 2 ounces citric acid.
Grate the yellow skin (not the white part) of the oranges, add the acid and sugar, and scald with 2 quarts boiling water. When cool, add the juice of oranges and lemons. Let stand 24 hours, strain and bottle. For drinking purposes, take 1 tablespoon to a cup of water. -Mrs. John Brydone, Milverton, Ont.
THE housewife can effect considerable saving in her flour bill by using such a thirsty flour as FIVE ROSES. It not only absorbs more water in the dough, but it retains more water in the oven, thus producing more bread. "We have been using FIVE ROSES flour and can gain a loaf of bread on every baking." Miss H. R., Brougham, Ont. "Where I use seven quarts of FIVE ROSES flour, I have used nine quarts of other flour." -A. P., Marshville, Ont. "Have tried others, and always go back to FIVE ROSES, as I have more bread with same amount of flour." -Mrs. C. H. McN., Englehart, New Ont. "FIVE ROSES is both better and cheaper than any other." -Mrs. A. B., Brock Road, Ont. "Economy to use the best, which we think FIVE ROSES is." -Mrs. A. W. McC., Mountain View, B.C. "No waste bread at all while using your flour." -Mrs. D. S., Straffordville, Ont. (NAMES ON REQUEST)
This is a concentrated syrup, not a ready-to-drink beverage: four pounds of sugar and two ounces of citric acid make a shelf-stable base that is diluted a tablespoon at a time. The one real gap is that the recipe never says how many oranges and lemons to use.
- The missing quantityNo number of oranges or lemons is given, which was probably assumed knowledge in a household that bought fruit by the dozen. For a syrup of this size, a dozen oranges and three or four lemons is a reasonable reading, but the original is genuinely ambiguous and any figure is an inference.
- Citric acidTwo ounces is about 1/4 cup of the crystalline powder sold today for canning and cheesemaking. It supplies the sharpness that the fruit juice alone cannot carry at this dilution, and along with the heavy sugar load it helps the syrup keep.
- Sugar by weightFour pounds of granulated sugar is roughly 9 cups. Weigh it if you can; volume measures of sugar drift enough at this scale to change how well the syrup keeps.
- Zest, not pithThe instruction to take the yellow skin and not the white is the hinge of the recipe. Pith turns the syrup bitter and the bitterness does not fade, so grate lightly and stop at the color change.
- ScaldSimply pour the 2 quarts of boiling water over the zest, acid and sugar and stir until dissolved. There is no boiling stage; the heat is there to dissolve the sugar and draw the oils out of the peel.
- Why it stands 24 hoursThe rest is an infusion, letting the peel oil migrate into the syrup. The recipe specifies a day; longer steeping with any pith attached may draw out bitterness.
- Bottling and storageNothing here is pasteurized and the bottles are not processed, so despite the sugar and acid this is a refrigerator syrup rather than a pantry one. Strain through a fine sieve or cloth, keep it cold, and use it within a few weeks.
- YieldSomewhere in the region of 3 to 4 quarts of syrup, though the total depends on how much juice goes in and the recipe never says. At the recommended 1 tablespoon per cup of water that is still a very large number of glasses, so scaling the recipe down by half or a quarter is sensible for a modern household.
- The flour copyThe paragraphs about thirsty flour and gained loaves are advertising for Five Roses, printed as filler beneath the recipe. They have nothing to do with the orangeade.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and built almost entirely out of recipes sent in by Canadian women, each credited with a name and town, as Mrs. Brydone of Milverton is here. A sugar-and-citric-acid fruit syrup like this belongs to a long line of home concentrates — shrubs, sherbets, raspberry vinegars — that let a household keep the flavor of fresh fruit long after the fruit was gone, and that supplied the non-alcoholic punches and church-social drinks in demand during the years when temperance sentiment was strong in Ontario. Citric acid was a common pantry item then, often bought by the ounce from a druggist, and it does double duty in the recipe: it brings the tartness that heavily diluted juice loses, and it lowers the pH enough to help the syrup keep.