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Lemon Syrup for Lemonade
Do not allow an accumulated supply of lemons to dry up or mold. They can be made into syrup. which will keep for some time, and which can be used for lemonade by simply adding water. To make syrup, boil a cup of sugar with one-quarter cup of water until it threads. Add to this the juice and pulp of six lemons and the grated rind of two, being careful to grate only the thin yellow part. Let all scald together, but do not boil.
Strain and bottle.
A simple lemon cordial base built on a hot sugar syrup. The whole point of the method is the second stage, where the fruit goes in off the boil.
- Scald, do not boilOnce the lemon juice and rind are added, hold the mixture below a simmer — around 180F is plenty. Boiling drives off the volatile oils in the zest and cooks the juice into a dull, marmalade-ish flavour.
- The thread stage"Until it threads" means roughly 230-234F on a candy thermometer, when a drop pulled between finger and spoon forms a short thread. With one cup sugar to a quarter cup water this takes only a few minutes; watch it, because so small a quantity of syrup climbs in temperature fast.
- Grating the rindThe instruction to take only the thin yellow part is the difference between a fragrant syrup and a bitter one. The white pith underneath contributes nothing but bitterness. A microplane over just the surface of the fruit does it.
- Yield and dilutionSix lemons and a cup of sugar give roughly a pint of syrup. Figure on about one part syrup to four or five parts cold water for lemonade, adjusted to taste and to the sharpness of the fruit.
- StrainingStrain while hot through a fine sieve or a double layer of cheesecloth. Pulp and grated zest left in the bottle will ferment or turn cloudy long before the syrup itself gives out.
- Keeping it"Will keep for some time" presumes cool storage and steady use. This is a fresh-juice syrup with no processing, so keep it refrigerated in a scalded, tightly stoppered bottle and use it within two or three weeks. It also freezes well in an ice-cube tray.
- Salvaging tired lemonsThe premise holds — lemons going soft still juice well. Discard any with mould, however; the visible spot is not the extent of it, and the flavour carries into the syrup.
Lemon syrup of this kind sits between two older traditions: the medicinal cordials and "lemon sherbets" of the eighteenth-century stillroom, and the commercial bottled syrups that soda fountains ran on by the late nineteenth century. Before refrigeration, a household that received lemons in quantity — they arrived by the box from citrus-growing regions — had a short window to use them. The framing here is what dates the piece: the argument is thrift rather than pleasure, and the reader is being told not to let fruit spoil in the bowl. That anxiety about waste ran through American domestic writing for decades and sharpened considerably around the food conservation campaigns of the First World War.