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Fancy Beverages
EMONADE-Allow to each one-half pint of strained lemon juice three pints of iced water and a heaping pint of sugar. Lemonade should invariably be served very cold, excepting, of course, in cases of cold and similar illness, when it is most beneficial taken very hot. Metal lemon-squeezers should never be used, as they impart an unpleasant taste to the juice; neither should any tin vessel be utilized in the preparation of lemonade, for the same reason.
ORANGEADE-This is prepared in the same manner as lemonade, except that oranges are used instead of lemons.
A proportional formula rather than a fixed batch, and a sweet one by current taste. The missing L at the start is a dropped decorative capital in the original printing.
- The proportions in cupsHalf a pint of strained lemon juice is 1 cup, about 5 to 6 lemons. Three pints of iced water is 6 cups, and a heaping pint of sugar is roughly 2 1/4 cups, near 1 lb.
- SweetnessThat works out to about two parts sugar to one part juice by volume, which reads as candy-sweet now. Two-thirds of the sugar gives a drink most palates will recognise as lemonade; add the rest only if the fruit is very sharp.
- Dissolve the sugar firstGranulated sugar will not go into iced water. Warm it with a cup of the water into a syrup, cool it, then combine with the juice and the remaining cold water and ice.
- Why no metal squeezer or tin vesselThe objection is sound but dated: it applies to bare tinned steel and unlined copper, which citric acid attacks and which throw a metallic taste. Stainless steel, glass and enamelled ware are inert and fine.
- Orangeade needs less sugarOranges run three to four times sweeter and much lower in acid than lemons. Made to this formula it will be cloying; cut the sugar sharply and add the juice of a lemon for backbone.
- The hot versionHot lemonade for a cold was standard domestic practice and survives as the lemon-and-honey drink. Heat it gently rather than boiling, since prolonged heat flattens the fresh citrus aroma.
- YieldAbout 3 1/2 pints, or 7 cups before ice; six to eight glasses.
Lemonade of this kind — juice, water, sugar, served cold — was the plain end of a long American tradition of shrubs, switchels, syllabubs and punches, and by 1890 it was often said to be the standard temperance drink at church suppers, fairs and political picnics. The warning against tin is a period detail worth reading closely, since inexpensive kitchenware then was largely tinned iron and unlined copper, and the sour taste citric acid drew out of a worn tin surface was a real and common complaint. The recommendation of hot lemonade for a cold was ordinary domestic medicine of the era, perhaps owing something to an older folk belief in citrus as a corrective for feverish conditions rather than to any understanding of vitamin C, which was isolated in 1928 and chemically identified and synthesised in 1932-33.