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Lemon Squash
This is made in the same manner as lemonade only leaving in the crushed halves of the lemon.
A one-line entry that assumes you already know the fountain's lemonade formula. The whole difference is that the spent lemon shells stay in the glass, which changes the drink more than it sounds.
- No quantities are givenThe original relies on the book's own lemonade entry, which is not reproduced here. Fountain lemonade of the period was generally built from lemon juice, sugar syrup, ice and charged water, but any specific figures are reconstruction, not what this text says.
- Sugar syrup, not granulatedFountain work used ready-made simple syrup, since granulated sugar dissolves slowly in cold carbonated water and stirring drives off the gas. Make a 1:1 syrup by weight and keep it chilled; start with 1 tablespoon per glass and adjust.
- The hinge: how long the shells stay inCrushed halves give up peel oil readily, while bitterness from the pith builds more slowly. Short contact gives the aromatic lift that distinguishes this from plain lemonade; long standing will make it harsher. Timing is a matter of taste, not of the text.
- Crush, do not shredPress the juiced halves with a muddler or the back of a spoon to bruise the zest. Grinding the white pith into the drink is what makes it acrid.
- Unwaxed fruitSince the peel is doing the flavouring, use unwaxed lemons or scrub them well. Supermarket citrus is routinely coated.
- Still or carbonatedThe book's lemonade base is not reproduced, so it is unclear whether charged or plain water is meant. Either soda water or plain cold water will work at home.
- Yield and glassScale it to whatever the book's lemonade makes; no yield is stated. Serve with the crushed shells left in, as the recipe directs, and give a straw or a long spoon.
"Squash" for a crushed-fruit drink is British usage, and the word survives in Britain today as the term for bottled fruit cordial. American soda fountains adopted it as a small variation on their staple lemonade, and manuals of this kind — written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the home cook — could compress such variants into a single sentence, since the operator already knew the base drink by heart. The fountain trade ran on exactly this logic: a handful of syrups, charged water, and a long printed list of names built from small changes in garnish, glass or handling.