Friend of The VCBT Tracer Hand recently asked us on Twitter if we have any recipes for lemonade. It turns out we do. Here they are:
(Mrs Beeton’s All About Cookery, can’t find date of publication)
(The English Cookery Book, Lucie Nicoll, 1936)
(Francatelli’s Cook’s Guide, 1864)
(Cookery Illustrated & Household Management, poss 1930s)
(The Household Encyclopaedia, no idea when published)
(Modern Cookery Illustrated, 1947)
I would love to hear from anyone who’s tried making any of these!
I’m sure I’ve had a go at a lemon-zest/boiling water/sugar and juice version, which ends up like lemon squash that actually tastes of lemon and may even contain vitamin C. Adding the juice to a cooled zest infusion maximises vitamin C content. Also works with oranges.
I can find no mention of an “Adams syrup gauge” on the internet aside from references to Francatelli’s Cook’s Guide. Whatever its “strength”, though, that is a LOT of syrup! Good God! A pint and a quarter of syrup? Ah but then that’s mixed with three pints of water. It looks like a recipe for an exceptionally sweet and not very lemony lemonade.
The “two minute lemonade” makes the rookie error of attempting to mix sugar into cold water. I wonder if the authors of this recipe ever actually tried it.
Most of the others are minute variations on a theme – put lemon juice and rind into some kind of vessel, pour boiling water over it, and “allow to get cold”. (In the 1930s I suppose this meant to shove it in the icebox.) Oh and STRAIN. (Strain! I never strain my lemonade. I like all the bits floating around! Is this some kind of cod-rustic affectation?) Clearly the consensus for many centuries has been to give lemonade a good sieving.
Which leaves us two most intriguing recipes. There’s Mrs Beeton’s bicarb fizzy action – a surprising dash of adventure from a woman who prescribes “boiled toast” or something for a cold. And then “lemonless lemonade”, with tartaric acid and suspiciously lemon-like “lemon essence” (???)
If I had to guess which one tasted best I’d say the one from the Household Encyclopaedia. But I can’t be sure til I test them. Anyway, huge thanks for these, VCBT!
Please do some blogging for us, you write so nice!
Re Syrup Gauge – home brewers & winemakers use a gizmo to measure the specific gravity, which tells them about the alcohol level reached. A syrup gauge may be similar in that each strength of syrup will have its own specific gravity. [Back to chemistry classes!]