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Lemon Syrup for Hot Lemonade
One-half ounce extract of lemon, 1 ounce solution of citric acid, 32 ounces syrup. To serve, add 1 ounce of the syrup to a mug of boiling water. A thin slice of lemon gives it a tempting appearance.
A soda-fountain bottling formula rather than a domestic recipe: you mix a quart of flavoured syrup once, then draw off an ounce at a time all winter. The measurements are the fountain trade's, so they need translating.
- "Syrup" means fountain stock syrupNot maple, not corn syrup. Soda fountains kept a plain heavy sugar syrup, thick enough to keep without fermenting; published strengths vary, with the pharmacy standard running towards two parts sugar to one of water by weight. Substituting a thinner 1:1 simple syrup gives a weaker, less stable result.
- Ounces are fluid ounces32 ounces is a quart. Half an ounce of extract is a tablespoon; one ounce is two tablespoons. The finished batch is about 33 fl oz.
- Solution of citric acidThis was a pharmacy stock item, not crystals straight from the jar. Period formulas give no single strength; dilutions vary from source to source. If you are working from powder, that ambiguity matters: start with less and taste, since the acid is what makes the drink read as lemon rather than as sugar.
- Extract of lemonAn alcoholic tincture of lemon oil, the same thing sold today as lemon extract, and considerably stronger than lemon juice. It carries aroma but no acidity, which is exactly why the citric acid is in the formula.
- Yield and servingAbout 33 servings. One ounce of syrup to a mugful of boiling water is roughly one part syrup to eight or so of water, depending on the size of the mug. Adjust by the ounce rather than the spoonful.
- Don't boil the syrupThe flavour lives in volatile lemon oil suspended in alcohol. Add the syrup to the mug of boiling water, as directed; simmering the mixed drink drives off most of what you paid for.
- KeepingAt full fountain sugar strength this holds for months in a closed bottle in a cool place. A lighter syrup should be refrigerated and used within a few weeks.
Hot drinks were the soda fountain's answer to the months when nobody wanted a cold glass, and American fountains of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries kept a hot-water tap and a line of winter syrups alongside the carbonated ones. Because most fountains sat inside drugstores, their formulas read like pharmacy work: extracts, solutions of acid measured by the ounce, everything compounded in quart batches and drawn off by the portion. Hot lemonade in particular had a foot in the medicine trade, being a standing household remedy for chills and colds long before it was a counter drink, which is part of why a druggist's fountain was the natural place to buy one. The slice of lemon at the end is pure salesmanship, and the book says as much.