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Lemon Appetizer
Put a piece of ice in a tall glass and add the juice of one lemon and two tablespoonfuls of Worcestershire Sauce. Fill up the glass with Seltzer and serve.
A two-minute soft drink from the temperance era, built to imitate the bracing bitterness of a pre-dinner cocktail. The proportions are the only thing that need thought.
- The Worcestershire is the whole point — and it is a lotTwo tablespoons in a single tall glass is a very assertive dose by modern palates. Start with two teaspoons, taste, and build up if you want the original's slap.
- Glass size sets the dilutionA "tall glass" of the period was probably somewhere around 10-12 oz. Fill a 16 oz tumbler and the drink goes flat-tasting; the seltzer should carry the lemon and sauce, not bury them.
- One lemonExpect 2-3 tablespoons of juice from an average supermarket lemon. Two lemons may be closer to the intended balance if yours are small.
- Ice"A piece of ice" means one hand-chipped lump off a block, which melts slowly and dilutes little. A single large cube behaves the same way; a glass packed with small cubes will water the drink down within a couple of minutes.
- SeltzerPlain carbonated water, unsweetened and unflavoured. Club soda works and adds a faint mineral salinity that suits the Worcestershire; tonic does not, as the sugar and quinine fight the lemon.
- Stir, or don'tThe recipe says nothing about mixing. Worcestershire is denser than water and will sit in the bottom; give it one gentle stir with a long spoon before serving or the first sip is all sauce and the last all soda.
- Yield and serviceOne glass, one drinker, served cold immediately before a meal. It goes limp as the carbonation dies, so build it at the table.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of non-alcoholic drink books published in the years when national Prohibition was visibly coming and hostesses needed something to put in a guest's hand. The title's phrase — being "on the water wagon" — comes from the horse-drawn carts that sprinkled dusty American streets, and is generally traced to the idea that a man who had sworn off liquor would sooner drink from the water cart than break his pledge. Drinks like this one exist to reproduce the function of a cocktail rather than its flavour: something sour, savoury and sharply carbonated to wake up the appetite before dinner. The Worcestershire-and-lemon combination puts it in the same family as the prairie oyster and, later, the Bloody Mary, all of them descendants of the nineteenth-century belief that a salty, acidic bracer was the proper way to open a meal or close a bad night.