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Orangeade Syrup
Combine two cups (one pint) Karo, Red Label, with the juice of six medium-sized oranges and one and one-half lemons. of six mediumsized oranges and one and one-half lemons. Pour into a glass jar and cover. This will keep several days in an icebox. Use in making fruit punch, orange ice, in equal parts with Lemonade Syrup for a refreshing drink.
An uncooked syrup that depends entirely on the corn syrup for body and keeping quality. The only real decisions are which Karo to buy and how hard you squeeze the fruit.
- Karo Red LabelKaro was sold in several grades distinguished by label colour, and period cookbooks call for them by name. Exactly which grade Red Label denoted is not certain from this recipe alone. A light corn syrup is the closer match for a clear orange drink today; a dark one will give a deeper colour and a faint molasses note.
- How much juice that isSix medium oranges yield roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups of juice, and one and a half lemons about 3 to 4 tablespoons. The finished syrup comes to somewhere near a quart, depending on the fruit.
- The duplicated lineThe second "of six medium-sized oranges and one and one-half lemons" is a typesetting repeat, not a second addition of fruit. Use the quantities once.
- Strain or don'tPulp will settle and sour faster than clear juice. Strain through a fine sieve if you want the syrup to last the several days promised; leave it in if it is going straight into punch.
- Icebox means refrigeratorAn icebox ran warmer and less steadily than a modern refrigerator, so "several days" is conservative. Keep it covered and cold and use it within about a week; there is no cooking step and nothing here preserves it beyond the acid and sugar.
- SweetnessCorn syrup is noticeably less sweet than an equal volume of sugar syrup and will not crystallise. Expect a less cloying result than a classic sugar-based orange cordial, and taste before diluting.
- Proportions for drinkingThe recipe gives no dilution rate. Start at one part syrup to four or five parts cold water or soda water and adjust; for punch, treat it as both the sweetener and part of the liquid.
- For orange iceCorn syrup lowers the freezing point and keeps the ice softer and less granular than a sugar-only base. Churn it or stir it every half hour in the freezer rather than leaving it to set solid.
Karo corn syrup appeared in the early 1900s under the corn-refining interests that were consolidated as the Corn Products Refining Company in 1906, and it arrived with a steady output of promotional cookbooks whose recipes exist to demonstrate that the product can do more than one job. That is plainly the case here: the syrup is not an end in itself but a base for punch, for ices, and for mixing with a companion Lemonade Syrup that appears alongside it in the same book. Bottled fruit syrups were a fixture of the home luncheon table and the soda fountain alike, and a household that kept a jar of each could produce a cold drink for callers without boiling sugar on a summer stove — which is the real argument the recipe is making.