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Lemonade, Hot
One of the original drinks so often made but served poorly is hot lemonade. There are numerous ways of preparing hot lemonade-and if you are as particular about making it good as you certainly are about your hot chocolate, there is no good reason why it won't profit you for your trouble. To make it from the juice of 1½ a lemon, 1 teaspoonful powdered sugar, twist a small portion of lemon peel over the cup so as to get a flavor of the lemon, then fill cup with hot water and stir. You will have no "kick" from your cup with hot water and stir. You will have no "kick" from your customer about having to pay 10 cents.
A fountain formula rather than a household one: it is built to order in the cup, so everything depends on the proportions and the peel.
- The quantity of lemon is a typesetting error"the juice of 1½ a lemon" is almost certainly meant to read "½ a lemon" — the same slip that duplicated the last sentence of the paragraph. Half a lemon yields roughly 1 tablespoon of juice, which suits a 6 to 8 oz cup; use a whole lemon only if you want it sharp.
- Powdered sugarIn 1900s usage this generally meant finely ground sugar rather than today's confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Superfine or caster sugar behaves the same way; a teaspoon is modest by modern standards.
- The peel is the whole pointTwisting a strip of zest over the cup expresses lemon oil onto the surface of the drink, which is what makes hot lemonade smell like lemon rather than merely taste sour. Juice alone gives a thin, flat cup.
- Water temperatureThe recipe says only "hot water"; fountains generally drew it from a standing urn. Water at a full boil will drive off the aromatics, so water just off the boil is kinder to the flavour. Note the recipe's own order: juice, sugar and the twist of peel first, then fill with hot water and stir.
- Cup sizeFountain cups of the period were generally nearer 6 to 8 fluid ounces than a modern mug. Scaled up to a 12 oz mug the drink will taste thin.
- YieldOne cup, made to order. The formula does not batch well — juice held hot for any length of time turns dull and slightly bitter.
- No spirits involvedThe "kick" in the last line is about the customer complaining over the ten-cent price, not about alcohol. Nothing in the recipe is fortified.
Hot lemonade belonged to the medicinal end of the soda fountain, where the dispenser doubled as a druggist and a cup of something hot and citric was the standard answer to a cold or a raw throat. American fountains ran a hot-water urn alongside the syrup pumps, which allowed them to serve hot chocolate, beef tea, clam bouillon and this he councounter busy when nobody wanted ice cream. The comparison to hot chocolate seems telling: chocolate is often said to have been the prestige hot drink, prepared with care, and the author's complaint appears to be that lemonade got tossed together carelessly and sold at the same dime. Ten cents was a real price for a fountain drink around the turn of the century, when a plain soda often went for five, which is why he insists the extra trouble pays.