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Lemon Syrup (Lemons grated peel of Lemons)
Lemons, grated peel of . . . . . . . 8, Lemons, grated peel of Lemons, expressed juice of, 8; Fruit Acid, 1 ounce; Soda Foam, 1 ounce; Granulated Sugar, 6 lbs.; Water, 4 pints. Contuse the peel with 8 ounces of the sugar until the oil is thoroughly expressed and absorbed by the sugar, then mix with the remainder of the sugar, add the juice and water, dissolve by heat, strain, and when cool add the acid and foam.
A soda-fountain bulk syrup, meant to be measured into a glass and topped with carbonated water rather than drunk as made. The whole point of the method is the oil in the peel, which carries most of the lemon aroma.
- Contuse the peel"Contuse" means bruise or pound. Work the grated zest into the 8 ounces of sugar with a mortar and pestle, or rub it hard with your fingers, until the sugar is damp, yellow and fragrant. This is the hinge of the recipe: skip it and you have sour sugar water.
- The quantity of lemonsThe "8" is printed against the juice line, and the peel line carries no figure at all; the usual reading is 8 lemons for both, so zest 8 and juice 8, giving roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups of juice depending on size. Grate before juicing, and take only the yellow, not the white pith.
- Fruit acidIn fountain and pharmacy practice this is usually citric or tartaric acid, sometimes as dry crystals and sometimes as a made-up solution in water, which changes the strength considerably. One ounce of crystals in this batch would be very sharp; the amount is genuinely ambiguous, so add a little at a time and taste against carbonated water.
- Soda foamA foaming agent, historically an extract of quillaia (soap bark) or a solution of egg albumen or gum, sold ready-made to fountains to give the drink a head. It is not a flavour and can be left out entirely; modern quillaia-based foamers are sold for cocktail use.
- Dissolve by heat, but gentlyWarm just enough to take the sugar into solution. Hard boiling drives off the peel oil you went to the trouble of extracting, and prolonged heating darkens a syrup that should stay pale.
- Why the acid and foam go in coldHeat plus acid inverts the sugar and dulls the fresh lemon note, and a foaming agent is safer added cold, since an albumen-based one will coagulate outright. Cool the strained syrup before adding either, as directed.
- Yield and useSix pounds of sugar to four pints of water plus juice gives a little over a gallon of heavy syrup. Figure 1 to 1 1/2 fluid ounces per 8-ounce glass of soda water, so this makes somewhere around a hundred drinks.
- Keeping itAt this sugar concentration the syrup resists spoilage, but the fresh juice and peel oil do not keep indefinitely. Bottle in scalded jars, refrigerate, and use within a few weeks; scale the batch down unless you are actually running a fountain.
Syrup formulas like this one belong to the era when American soda fountains were fixtures of the drugstore and the soda man compounded his own flavours from bulk sugar, acids and fruit. Lemon was often said to be the baseline syrup of the trade, cheap and universally liked, and the practice of bruising the zest with sugar to capture the volatile oil recalls the pharmacist's oleosaccharum, a technique also long used in punch-making. "Soda foam" was a commercial preparation, generally based on saponin-bearing quillaia bark, sold precisely because customers judged a fountain drink partly by its head. The fruit acid sharpened a very sweet syrup in a shop where a gallon might sit for days between rushes.