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Summer Drink
1 Tea or Tablespoon Fruit Juice 1/2 Glass Water 1 Tea or Tablespoon Honey Soda, Tartaric Acid Stir in as much soda as will lie on a dime, and then stir in half as much tartaric acid, and drink at once. 1 Level Teaspoon Cream of Tartar 1 Tablespoon Honey Water Dissolve the cream of tartar in a little boiling water, add the honey, and fill up the glass with cold water, or hot water where a hot drink is preferred.
Wholesome and refreshing. Especially good in case of a feverish cold.
Two effervescing drinks built the way a nineteenth-century pharmacist would have built them: an acid and an alkali meeting in the glass. Both are simple, but the proportions are given in coins and guesses, so a little translation helps.
- "Soda" means baking sodaPlain sodium bicarbonate, not soda water and not washing soda. As much as will lie on a dime is an eyeballed measure, somewhere in the region of 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon; the tartaric acid is then half whatever you used, most easily taken as a pinch.
- Tartaric acidStill sold as a food-grade powder for winemaking and baking, usually near the citric acid. Use only material labelled food grade, and keep the quantity to the pinch specified; more will not fizz better, it will only taste harsh.
- "Drink at once" is the hingeThe bubbles are carbon dioxide generated in the glass. Stir, then drink within a few seconds, or it goes flat.
- Glass sizeA tumbler of this period was commonly somewhere around 8 ounces, so half a glass is roughly 4 ounces of water. Scale the sweetening to taste; a tablespoon of honey in that volume is quite sweet.
- Fruit juiceLemon is the obvious choice and adds acid of its own. If you use lemon or another sharp juice, cut the tartaric acid back or leave it out, since the fizz will happen anyway.
- The second drink is differentCream of tartar (potassium bitartrate) with honey does not effervesce; it is simply a tart, mineral-tasting lemonade substitute. Dissolve it in an ounce or two of boiling water first, as it is only sparingly soluble in cold.
- YieldEach set of proportions makes one glass. Both mix in under a minute and do not keep.
- The health claim"Especially good in case of a feverish cold" reflects period practice, not evidence. Cream of tartar is a mild diuretic and laxative in quantity, so treat this as a pleasant drink rather than a remedy and do not repeat it through the day.
Effervescing drinks mixed in the glass were a household descendant of the apothecary's "soda powders" and "seidlitz powders" of the early 1800s, which came as paired papers of bicarbonate and an acid to be dissolved separately and combined at the moment of drinking. Domestic manuals carried the trick forward for anyone without access to a soda fountain, and cream of tartar drinks in particular had a long life as a cooling beverage for the sick: cream of tartar whey and "imperial drink" appear in English and American receipt books through the nineteenth century, generally recommended for fevers on the old theory that acids cooled the blood.