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Orange-Lime
Squeeze the juice of one orange, the juice of one half a lime, and add one tablespoonful of orange syrup and one tablespoonful of sugar. Mix well, pour over cracked ice, and fill up the glass with cold water. Decorate with a cherry and serve with straws.
A soda-fountain style cooler that assumes a syrup bottle on the back bar. The only real work is getting the sweet-sour balance right for the fruit you actually have.
- Orange syrupA fountain syrup, not marmalade or liqueur: sugar dissolved in orange juice, sometimes with a little zest. Proportions varied from house to house and were often sugar-heavy. Bottled orange syrup for sodas still exists, or a simple syrup infused with orange peel stands in.
- The extra sugarA tablespoon of syrup plus a tablespoon of granulated sugar makes a distinctly sweet drink by modern taste. Taste after the syrup and add loose sugar only if it needs it.
- Dissolve before dilutingGranulated sugar dissolves poorly in cold juice over ice. Stir it into the juice and syrup thoroughly first, as the recipe directs, then pour over the ice.
- Cracked iceChips knocked off a block, coarser than crushed and finer than cubes. Cubes wrapped in a towel and hit with a rolling pin give the right texture; it chills fast and dilutes fast, which is part of the drink.
- Glass sizeNo volume is given. A soda glass in the 10-12 oz range is a reasonable assumption, with the water simply topping up whatever space the ice leaves. One serving.
- Water, not sodaThe recipe says cold water deliberately, this being a still cooler rather than a fizz. Chilled sparkling water works and makes a livelier drink, but it is a change to the original.
- The cherryPeriod garnish meant a maraschino cherry from the jar, brighter and firmer than a fresh one. A brandied or preserved cherry suits the drink better if you have it.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon collected several hundred soft drinks at the moment when American drinking was being legislated out of existence, and the title says everything about its purpose: the water wagon was the temperance metaphor for going dry, and the book equips the reader to stay on it without drinking plain water. Recipes like this one sit close to soda-fountain practice, which is why they call for bottled fruit syrups and cracked ice and finish with a cherry and straws. The drugstore fountain had long been refining the sweet-acid cooler as a commercial product, and Prohibition-era home entertaining drew on its vocabulary. The pairing of orange with a squeeze of lime adds a sharper acidity than orange juice alone supplies.