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Lemonade
American Concentrated Lemonade Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 2 quarts; American Fruit Acid, 1 ounce.
This is a fountain formula rather than a household recipe: it makes a bulk lemonade syrup to be drawn by the ounce and finished with water at the point of service. Two of the three ingredients are proprietary trade goods that no longer exist under those names.
- What you are makingThree quarts of concentrated syrup, not three quarts of lemonade. At a fountain draw of 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces of syrup per glass, 96 fluid ounces of syrup yields roughly 64 to 96 drinks once diluted with plain or carbonated water.
- "Plain syrup"Fountain plain syrup was generally a heavy simple syrup, much sweeter than a 1:1 bar syrup, though published strengths vary from manual to manual. Substituting an equal-parts syrup will give a thinner, less sweet result at the same draw.
- "American Concentrated Lemonade Syrup"The name suggests a proprietary trade base rather than something made in the shop, presumably lemon flavouring and juice carried in sugar syrup. The nearest modern equivalent is a good lemon cordial or concentrate, but strengths vary enormously; taste and adjust rather than assuming a one-for-one swap.
- "American Fruit Acid"Another trade preparation, most likely a solution of citric or tartaric acid. Its purpose is to restore the sharpness that sugar flattens, not to flavour. One ounce in three quarts is a small correction, and food-grade citric acid dissolved in water is the sensible stand-in.
- Order of mixingIf you are substituting crystalline acid for the trade preparation, dissolve it in water before it meets the syrup and stir it in cold; dry acid tipped into cold heavy syrup leaves gritty pockets that are slow to disperse.
- KeepingAcid plus sugar plus time means inversion: the syrup will slowly change character and taste sweeter on standing, and an unpasteurised lemon concentrate can spoil or ferment. Make what you will use in a week and keep it refrigerated.
- ServingDraw the syrup into the glass first, then add water — carbonated for a lemon soda, still and iced for lemonade proper. Adding syrup to a full glass of soda water will foam it over.
Fountain manuals of this kind were written for the dispenser behind the marble counter, not for the home cook, which is why the formula reads as a proportion sheet rather than a method. By the late nineteenth century the American soda fountain is generally said to have leaned heavily on bought-in concentrates and "plain syrup" made on the premises in bulk; supply houses sold branded extracts, colours and fruit acids by the gallon, and a good deal of a dispenser's skill lay in blending them to a house standard and holding it consistent all summer. Lemonade was the plainest thing on the list and the benchmark for the rest — a drink that had been sold from street stalls and pharmacy counters long before carbonation reached it. The separate ounce of fruit acid is the telling detail: in a syrup this sweet, the lemon reads as sugar unless acid is added back, and the trade treated acidity as an ingredient to be dosed rather than a property of the fruit.