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Lemulto Lemonade
Something New-Lemulto and Ormulto.
Both make fine hot drinks, and the Lemulto makes a perfectly delicious hot lemonade. Directions for both: 3 or 4 drops in a hot soda cup, 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar, a dash of acid phosphate. The finest preparation ever offered for producing fresh, fruity and quickly made orange and lemon syrups at a saving of time and labor. Greatly superior to anything now on the market. Equal to fresh fruit, without the trouble. Full directions on each package. Try them and you will use no other.
This is half advertisement, half formula — the working part is the single line of directions, which assumes a soda fountain's hot-water draught and a bottle of a proprietary flavoring extract that has not been sold in a century.
- Lemulto and OrmultoProprietary flavouring preparations sold for making lemon and orange syrups; the advertisement does not state what was in them, though compounds of this kind were generally citrus-oil based. Nothing under those names is sold now; the nearest equivalent is a strong lemon or orange extract, or a drop of citrus oil, and 3 or 4 drops of a modern extract may well be weaker than the original concentrate.
- A hot soda cupThe fountain's cup for hot drinks, filled from the fountain's hot-water draught rather than a kettle; something in the region of six to eight ounces. Build the drink in a warmed mug of about that size, with the water hot but not at a rolling boil.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium and magnesium salts, common behind soda fountains of the period for adding tartness without the fruitiness of citric acid. It is made again today for cocktail and soda work. A dash means a few drops from a dasher bottle, not a spoonful — it is aggressively sour.
- Sugar, not syrupTwo teaspoonfuls of granulated sugar was practical here only because the water was hot enough to dissolve it. Stir until you feel no grit at the bottom before tasting, or the last mouthful will be the sweet one.
- The proportions are a starting pointAdjust to taste. Add the acid last and in stages: the balance point between the sugar and the phosphate is the whole drink, and there is no fruit juice to hide behind.
- YieldOne cup, one serving. The syrup-making claims in the rest of the copy referred to instructions printed on the package, which are lost.
Hot lemonade was a standard winter offering at American soda fountains, sold as much as a cold remedy as a refreshment — the fountain in a drugstore sat a few feet from the prescription counter, and the two trades shaded into each other. Acid phosphate belongs to that same overlap: a pharmacist's preparation that became a fountain staple, in part because phosphates were widely believed to be tonic and nerve-restoring. Compounds like Lemulto were sold to dispensers, and the pitch here — "equal to fresh fruit, without the trouble" — is the standard promise of the era's flavor-house catalogues. Trade manuals of this kind were often part recipe book and part sales vehicle, and this entry reads as both.