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Lemon Juice (To every pint of strained)
To every pint of strained lemon juice add one pound of powdered sugar. Stir until the sugar is thoroughly dissolved, and pour into small bottles. On the top of each bottle put one teaspoonful of olive oil, and cork tightly. When wanted for use uncork carefully and remove the oil with a bit of absorbent cotton.
A keeping syrup rather than a drink: bottled lemon juice sweetened to the point where sugar does much of the preserving work, with a float of oil standing in for a vacuum seal. A few of its assumptions need updating.
- The ratioOne pound of sugar to one pint of juice is roughly 2¼ cups sugar to 2 cups juice. That is a heavy syrup by design — the sugar concentration is part of what discourages spoilage.
- How many lemonsA pint of strained juice takes about 10 to 14 medium lemons, depending on size and how hard you press. Roll them firmly on the counter first and strain through a fine sieve, not cheesecloth, to keep the pulp out without losing volume.
- "Powdered sugar" in 1919"Powdered sugar" in this period generally meant finely ground granulated sugar rather than the confectioner's sugar sold today, which carries cornstarch and will cloud the syrup. Use superfine (caster) sugar, or ordinary granulated with longer stirring.
- Dissolving without heatNo heat is called for; the sugar goes in cold. Cold sugar takes a while to go into solution — stir in stages, cover, and come back to it over an hour or two rather than giving up and adding heat.
- The oil sealA teaspoon of olive oil floats on the juice and blocks air, the same trick used on home-bottled fruit juices before reliable caps. It works only if the bottle is genuinely full and undisturbed; tip it once and the film breaks. Modern screw-top bottles filled to the neck do the job better, and the cotton-wool removal step becomes unnecessary.
- StorageEven at this sugar level the syrup is an uncooked, unpasteurized product and will eventually throw yeast or surface mold at room temperature. Keep it refrigerated and use within a few weeks; discard at any sign of fizzing, haze or a film that is not the oil.
- Yield and useAbout 3 cups of syrup. For lemonade, figure roughly 2 tablespoons to a tall glass of cold or soda water and adjust; it is also the right thing for sweetening iced tea, where undissolved granulated sugar is a nuisance.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the small flood of temperance-era drink books published in the United States around 1919, the year the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified, with national Prohibition taking effect in January 1920 and a wartime prohibition in force from the middle of 1919. Books of this kind leaned hard on citrus, since lemon and lime carried the sharpness that alcohol had been providing, and a household that wanted lemonade in February needed a way to hold summer juice. Sealing a bottle with a film of oil is much older than the book — the technique appears in nineteenth-century preserving manuals for fruit juices and vinegars, and is generally traced to the same reasoning that put a layer of fat over potted meat. What dates the recipe is not the method but the confidence that a home cook would keep absorbent cotton within reach of the pantry.