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Irish Moss Lemonade
4 tablespoons Irish moss 2 cups cold water 3 tablespoons lemon juice sugar syrup Pick over and soak moss in cold water to cover for one half hour; drain, cover with two cups cold water, and cook ten minutes; strain, add lemon juice and sugar syrup to taste. cup fresh milk salt
A thin, faintly gelled lemon drink built on carrageen — the dried red seaweed sold as Irish moss. It belongs to the invalid-cookery tradition, where a drink was expected to be mildly nourishing as well as refreshing.
- Do not overcook the mossTen minutes of simmering is enough to draw out the carrageenan; longer extraction gives a heavier, slippery body that sets into jelly as it chills. If the strained liquid thickens too much on cooling, thin it with cold water before adding the lemon.
- Irish moss todaySold dried as Irish moss or carrageen, usually from health-food shops or Irish and Caribbean grocers. Four tablespoons of the dried, crumbled weed is roughly 8–10 g. It is not the same as the refined carrageenan powder used as a commercial stabiliser, which will not behave the same way here.
- "Pick over"Wild-harvested moss carries sand, shell fragments and stray bits of other seaweed. Spread it out dry, sort it, then rinse well — the soaking water should be discarded, not used for cooking.
- Sugar syrupSimple syrup: sugar and water boiled together until clear, then cooled. The recipe leaves the quantity to taste; a couple of tablespoons suits this volume.
- StrainingA fine sieve leaves a slightly cloudy, faintly seaweedy liquid; a double layer of cheesecloth gives a cleaner result. Press the softened moss to get the last of the gel out.
- The stray line"cup fresh milk salt" at the end is not part of this drink. It appears to be an ingredient fragment from elsewhere on the page, and should be ignored.
- Yield and servingAbout two cups, enough for two small glasses. Serve well chilled over ice; it separates on standing, so stir or shake before pouring.
Carrageen, or Irish moss, is a red seaweed gathered off the rocky Atlantic coasts of Ireland and, in North America, of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes, where a commercial harvest was well established by the nineteenth century. Boiled in water it releases carrageenan, a gelling polysaccharide, and generations of cooks used it to make blancmanges and jellies without animal gelatin. It carried a strong reputation as a demulcent ab soothing to sore throats and chesty coughs ab which is why lemonade made with it turns up in the invalid and convalescent sections of cookbooks alongside barley water and beef tea.