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Lemon or Orange Syrup
Put one pound and a half white sugar to each pint of juice. Add some peel, and boil ten minutes, then strain and cork. It makes a fine beverage, and is useful for flavoring pies and puddings. The juice of any acid fruit may be made into a syrup by the above recipe.
A straightforward fruit syrup at a fixed ratio: 1½ pounds sugar to 1 pint juice. The points below cover the measurements, the peel, and how to keep it once made.
- The ratio in modern terms1 pint of juice is 2 cups; 1½ pounds of white sugar is about 3⅓ cups granulated. That is a heavy syrup, roughly 60 percent sugar by weight once dissolved and higher after the boil reduces it, which is what keeps it from spoiling quickly.
- How much fruitA pint of juice takes roughly 10 to 12 lemons, or 4 to 6 juice oranges depending on size. Strain out pulp and seeds before you measure, since pulp throws off the volume.
- "Some peel" means zest, not rind"Some peel" is best read as zest rather than thick rind -- pare the colored outer layer off one or two fruits with a vegetable peeler and leave the white pith behind. Pith turns the syrup bitter over the ten minutes of boiling, and the oils you want are in the outer skin.
- Ten minutes is the whole timingThe recipe gives no other. Dissolving the sugar before it comes to a boil helps; longer boiling drives off the fresh citrus aroma and concentrates the syrup further.
- Strain while hotPull the peel and any scum through a fine sieve or a double layer of cheesecloth as soon as the boiling is done. Cooled syrup thickens and will not pass a fine strainer cleanly.
- Corking, then and nowThe original says only to strain and cork, with no storage instruction. Use a clean glass bottle, cool it, and keep it in the refrigerator, where a syrup this heavy will hold for months; discard it at any sign of mold or fermentation.
- Yield and useExpect about 3½ cups of syrup. For a drink, figure 1 to 2 tablespoons per glass of cold or sparkling water; for pies and puddings, use it in place of both the sugar and part of the liquid.
- Other fruitsThe closing line holds for any high-acid juice — raspberry, currant, sour cherry, blackberry. Those need no peel, and raspberry in particular benefits from the shorter end of the boil to keep its color.
Fruit syrups like this one were the household answer to a short citrus season and no refrigeration: sugar in sufficient concentration preserves the juice, and a corked bottle carried the flavor of December's lemons into July. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, was published in Louisville in 1878 and gathered contributions from Virginia housekeepers at a period when commercially bottled flavorings were becoming available but were still expensive, and adulteration of such goods was a common complaint. A related technique lies behind the older English and colonial "shrub," where vinegar or spirits joined the sugar and juice, and the same sugar-and-juice principle would be familiar in soda-fountain syrups. The note that any acid fruit will do is the practical heart of the entry: the method is a ratio, and it was expected to be applied to whatever fruit was to hand.