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Lemon Syrup
Mrs. De Forrest.
Pare off the yellow rind of the lemon, slice the lemon and put a layer of lemon and a thick layer of sugar in a deep plate; cover close with a saucer, and set on a warm place. This is an excellent remedy for a cold.
This is maceration rather than cooking: sugar draws the juice out of the lemon slices and dissolves in it, leaving a thick syrup. The whole method rests on giving it enough time in gentle warmth, not on heat.
- QuantitiesNone are given, which is typical of a household remedy; the recipe asks only for a "thick layer" of sugar over the slices. As a starting point, try one lemon to something like half a cup of sugar, which will yield only a few spoonfuls of syrup, and scale up in that ratio if you want more.
- "A deep plate"A soup plate or shallow bowl. The saucer on top is a lid, meant to trap the moisture rather than let it evaporate.
- "A warm place"In a coal-range kitchen this meant the back of the stove or the plate warmer, perhaps 100-120F. A turned-off oven with the light on, or a sunny windowsill, does the same. It should never get hot enough to cook the fruit.
- TimingThe recipe gives no time; it simply says to set the plate in a warm place. Allow several hours, checking until the sugar has liquefied. If granular sugar remains at the bottom, stir and give it longer rather than adding water.
- Why the rind comes offWhat is pared away is the yellow zest, not the white pith, which stays on the slices. The oil in the zest can dominate or turn harsh in a syrup left standing. If you do want that aroma, rub the pared zest into the sugar first and pull it out before the syrup goes to warm.
- Strain and storePress the slices lightly and strain. There is no cooking step and no preservative beyond the sugar, so keep it covered in the refrigerator and use within a week.
- Using itThe recipe names no dose. A teaspoon or two taken neat, or stirred into hot water, is the usual way such remedies were given. It also works as a lemon cordial base, which is closer to how a modern cook would use it.
- On the medical claimIt soothes a sore throat, as any warm sweet liquid does. It does not treat the underlying cold.
The Home Cook Book, a Chicago compilation of the mid-1870s (first issued in 1874, with later reprints), was assembled from recipes signed by named contributors, and Mrs. De Forrest's lemon syrup shows how thin the line between kitchen and medicine chest still was in a nineteenth-century American household: cough syrups, tonics and invalid drinks sat in the same volume as cakes and roasts. Drawing juice from fruit with sugar alone is an old confectioner's trick -- the same principle behind the oleo-saccharum of punch-making, where zest is pressed into sugar until it weeps oil -- and it required no fuel, no thermometer and no skill beyond patience, which is why it turns up in so many domestic manuals. Lemons came from a distance, shipped in from the Mediterranean and later California, so a recipe that drew every usable drop from a single lemon was thrift as much as physic.