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Lime Bracer
Put two tablespoonfuls of ginger syrup and the juice of half a lime into a medium sized glass and fill up with carbonated water. Stir well, and serve.
A two-ingredient soda that lives or dies on the ginger syrup, since nothing else in the glass carries flavor.
- Ginger syrupLess commonly stocked now than in a soda fountain's day, though some brands are sold. Simmer 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water and about 4 oz sliced fresh ginger for 10 minutes, steep off the heat until it tastes sharp, then strain; it keeps a couple of weeks refrigerated. Commercial ginger syrups can be sweeter and milder, so taste before you measure.
- Carbonated waterPlain seltzer or club soda. Avoid tonic, which adds quinine bitterness, and avoid commercial ginger ale, which would double the ginger and the sugar.
- "Medium sized glass"The book does not define it; fountain glasses of the period ran roughly 8 to 12 oz, so read it as something in that range. Two tablespoons of syrup in 8 oz of soda is lightly sweet; scale the syrup up if your glass is a modern 12- or 16-oz tumbler.
- Lime juiceHalf a lime gives about 1 tablespoon. Modern Persian limes are generally larger than the small limes once common, so if yours is mild you may want closer to a whole small lime.
- IceThe recipe does not mention it, though soda fountains of the period had shaved or cracked ice to hand. Fill the glass with ice first, add syrup and juice, then top with soda so the carbonation is not stirred flat.
- StirringOne gentle pass with a long spoon from the bottom up is enough. "Stir well" most likely just means lifting a heavy syrup up off the bottom rather than beating the gas out of the water.
- YieldOne glass. The syrup batch above will make roughly a dozen of them.
To be "on the water wagon" was to have sworn off drink, and this collection of syrups, sodas and fruit cups is addressed to households doing exactly that. A "bracer" was saloon language for a fortifying drink, so calling a ginger-and-lime soda a Lime Bracer is a borrowing of the vocabulary without the whiskey. Ginger syrup earned its place in that vocabulary honestly: ginger's warmth and faint burn on the throat were the closest a temperance drink could come to the bite of spirits, which is why ginger ale, ginger beer and ginger syrup recur so often in the non-alcoholic drink books of the period.