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Grapeade Syrup
Combine two cups (one pint) Karo, Red Label, one cup grape juice and the juice of a small lemon. This will keep several days in an icebox.
A bottled drink concentrate from a corn-syrup promotional booklet, meant to be diluted at the table with cold or sparkling water. Nothing is cooked, so the only real questions are what to buy and how much to use.
- Karo Red LabelKaro was sold in colour-coded grades, Blue Label being the pale, near-neutral syrup and Red Label a darker, more caramel-tasting one (dark corn syrup of this type was generally blended with refiners' syrup). Red Label is gone; today's light corn syrup is the closest in sweetness, while dark corn syrup is closer in colour but will muddy the grape.
- Grape juiceBottled grape juice of this era was typically unsweetened Concord, thick and musky. Use 100 percent Concord juice, not a grape drink or a white-grape blend, or the syrup tastes flat against all that corn sugar.
- MeasuresTwo cups Karo is 24 oz by weight, not 16 — corn syrup is dense. Measure by volume as written and grease the cup first so it releases cleanly.
- Yield and dilutionAbout three cups of syrup. Two to three tablespoons in a tall glass of iced water or soda water makes a drink; adjust up if you want it closer to a modern grape soda.
- The lemonThe lemon is not decoration. Corn syrup carries almost no acidity of its own, and the juice is what keeps the drink from reading as merely sweet -- add a second lemon if yours is small or dry.
- KeepingAn icebox ran somewhere around 45-50F, so the recipe's 'several days' is a cautious figure; a modern refrigerator at 40F should hold it longer in a covered bottle, with the sugar concentration doing most of the preserving work. Shake before pouring in case the juice settles out of the syrup.
Karo entered the American market in the early 1900s and its makers spent decades issuing small recipe booklets to persuade cooks that corn syrup belonged in candy, baking, and drinks rather than only on pancakes — this page is one product of that campaign, which is why the brand and grade are named where a generic cookbook would say only "syrup." The "-ade" ending arguably marks it as a member of the lemonade family, a term that by this period seems to have covered any sweetened, diluted fruit drink. Bottled unfermented grape juice was itself a relatively recent household staple, promoted heavily by temperance-minded producers from the late nineteenth century onward, and a syrup like this let a hostess serve something bright and cold at a summer luncheon without a punch bowl, ice cream freezer, or any cooking at all.