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Lemonade Syrup
Combine two cups (one pint) Karo, Red Label, with the juice of nine medium-sized lemons. Pour into a glass jar and This will keep for several days in the icebox and is an excellent base for punch or iced tea. cover.
A promotional-booklet formula built around a branded corn syrup, with the text scrambled by the typesetter — the sentence about the icebox has been dropped into the middle of "Pour into a glass jar and cover." Read it as: combine, jar, cover, refrigerate.
- Which KaroKaro was sold in several grades distinguished by label colour, and Red Label was the dark grade, which carries a molasses note that will tint the lemonade brown and taste of more than lemon. For a pale, neutral drink, the light (blue label) grade is the closer substitute.
- How much juice that isNine medium lemons yield roughly 1¼ to 1½ cups of juice. Measure rather than count.
- Sweetening powerCorn syrup is noticeably less sweet than an equal volume of sugar syrup, so this base tastes sharper than a standard lemonade concentrate. Taste before diluting and adjust with more syrup rather than more water.
- Strain itNothing here filters the juice. Pass it through a fine sieve before jarring — pulp and seed fragments will settle and sour first.
- IceboxAn icebox held somewhere around 45–50F, warmer than a modern refrigerator. "Several days" was a fair estimate then; refrigerated at 40F, fresh-squeezed juice with no cooking still fades in flavour after about four or five days and should be judged by smell and taste.
- Yield and dilutionYou will finish with roughly 3½ cups of syrup. Figure 3 to 4 tablespoons per tall glass of cold water or soda, or 2 tablespoons per glass of iced tea, then adjust.
Karo corn syrup is generally traced to the Corn Products Refining Company in the first years of the twentieth century, and its rise was driven as much by print as by taste: the company issued a steady stream of small recipe booklets showing housewives that the syrup could stand in for sugar in baking, candy, preserves and drinks. Pages like this one belong to that campaign — a recipe that exists chiefly to demonstrate a product's versatility, with the brand and label colour named as though they were an ingredient in their own right. The suggestion to keep a sweetened lemon base in the icebox for punch and iced tea is of a piece with that aim: one syrup, stretched across as many uses as the page can hold.