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Lemon Soda Nectar
Pour the juice of one lemon into a tall glass, adding one and one half teaspoonfuls of powdered sugar, and then fill the glass three quarters full of ice-cold Seltzer or Apollinaris. Stir thoroughly, add one half teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda, and serve while it is foaming. This mixture is a gentle laxative and is very refreshing before breakfast.
Soda Lemonade No. 1 Mix the juice of one lemon with two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Add three fourths of a cup of cold water, and when thoroughly chilled add one fourth teaspoonful of soda. Stir briskly and serve.
Soda Lemonade No. 2 Mix the juice of one half a lemon with one and one half tablespoonfuls of sugar. When the sugar is dissolved add cracked ice and a bottle of plain soda water.
Soda Lemonade No. 3 To the juice of three lemons add eight lumps of sugar. Stir until thoroughly dissolved, and pour into a pitcher over a piece of ice. Add two ice-cold bottles of club soda. Serve with slices of lemon, and fresh fruit. Sufficient for three people.
Four variations on the same idea: lemon juice, sugar, and carbonated water, with a pinch of bicarbonate in two of them to make the glass foam over. The units are the main obstacle.
- Apollinaris and SeltzerBoth are naturally carbonated German mineral waters; Apollinaris is still sold, and Seltzer here means bottled mineral water rather than the flavourless soda-siphon water of today. Any plain sparkling mineral water works, and a mildly saline one is closest to the original taste.
- A bottle of plain soda waterThe standard split of the period ran roughly 6 to 8 fl oz, not a modern 12 oz can or a litre bottle. For No. 3, two bottles means about 3/4 to 1 pint of soda in total.
- Lumps of sugarA cut loaf-sugar lump of the era is close to a level teaspoon, so eight lumps is about 2 1/2 tablespoons. Lump sugar dissolves slowly in cold liquid; dissolve it in the lemon juice first, or use superfine sugar or a simple syrup.
- Powdered sugarIn these books this generally means finely ground granulated sugar, what is now sold as superfine or caster sugar, not the cornstarch-thickened confectioners' sugar. Confectioners' sugar will cloud the drink and dull the fizz.
- The bicarbonate is the hingeAdd it last, off the spoon, and drink immediately. It reacts with the citric acid at once, and the foam and the sharp lift of flavour are gone within a minute; stirred in early, the drink goes flat and faintly soapy.
- Keep the soda modestA half teaspoon of bicarbonate is roughly 600 mg of sodium and leaves a distinctly alkaline aftertaste. The quarter teaspoon in No. 1 is the better balance against a single lemon. Anyone on a sodium-restricted diet should simply leave it out and rely on the carbonated water.
- The laxative claimEffervescing draughts and powders were commonly taken before breakfast as a mild aperient in this period. Treat that line as historical advice rather than instruction; the drink is worth making for the taste.
- YieldOnly No. 3 gives a figure. The first three each make a single glass.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to a small genre of temperance-era drink books that appeared as American prohibition sentiment gathered force before 1920: collections of "soft" drinks arranged and named like a bartender's guide, so that a hostess could serve something with ceremony and no alcohol. The Lemon and Lime section leans heavily on bottled mineral water, which was then both fashionable and medicinal. Apollinaris, from the Ahr valley in Germany, was marketed in the English-speaking world as "the Queen of Table Waters," and Seltzer, from Niederselters, gave its name to carbonated water generally. Dosing a glass of lemonade with bicarbonate to make it effervesce was a familiar trick, and such mixtures were often sold in paper packets as "seidlitz" or "soda powders" -- one paper of acid, one of alkali, combined in the tumbler. The recipe here simply substitutes fresh lemon for the tartaric acid packet, which is why the foam matters and why it must be drunk at once.