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Lemon and Ginger Ale
Put four teaspoonfuls of lemon syrup and two teaspoonfuls of lemon juice into a glass, and fill up with ice-cold ginger ale. Stir well.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a cocktail, and it depends entirely on the syrup being sweet enough to carry the raw juice.
- Glass sizeThe recipe does not say, but four teaspoons of syrup suit a small tumbler of roughly 6 to 8 oz rather than a modern pint glass; filling a 16 oz glass will taste thin and flat.
- Lemon syrupThis is fountain lemon syrup, not lemon curd or lemon cordial concentrate. Recipes vary, but a sugar-and-water syrup with lemon zest steeped in it, then strained and cooled, will stand in; bottled sour mix is the nearest commercial substitute, though generally more acidic.
- TeaspoonfulsA teaspoon here is roughly the modern 5 ml measure. Four syrup to two juice gives a 2:1 sweet-to-sour ratio, which is a useful starting point if you adjust the drink to a larger glass.
- Ginger aleGinger ale of this period was generally drier and more sharply gingery than most mass-market brands today. A dry ginger ale, or a ginger beer cut with soda water, gets closer to the intended balance than a sweet golden style.
- TemperatureThe recipe calls for ice-cold ginger ale rather than ice in the glass, which avoids dilution and loss of fizz. Chill the bottle thoroughly instead, and add ice only if the drink will stand.
- StirringThe recipe says to stir well, but a single gentle stir from the bottom is enough to lift the syrup off the base; working it hard flattens the carbonation.
- YieldOne glass. The proportions scale directly for a pitcher, but add the ginger ale at the moment of serving.
Books like this one belong to the long American temperance campaign, which had built a whole parallel drinks repertoire: the phrase "on the water wagon" (later "on the wagon") is generally traced to a pledge to drink nothing stronger than water, and a book titled for Uncle Sam's water wagon was pitched squarely at hostesses who needed something to serve. The recipes of such books draw on the world of the commercial soda fountain, which had become the respectable counterpart to the saloon and which worked from bottled flavouring syrups measured out by the spoonful. Ginger ale was central to that trade — a cheap, shelf-stable, assertively flavoured carbonate that could stand in for something more serious in the glass — and pairing it with lemon syrup and fresh juice is simply the fountain's standard method of turning one bottled mixer into a menu of named drinks.