Lemonade / lemon cordial

Tree

So I had a good recipe for lemon cordial/lemonade last year, but I have no idea where it went.
It's usually just lemon juice/sugar/zest/water (fizzy water). Sometimes with some mint in there.
Recipes seem to vary from kilogrammes of sugar to teaspoons of sugar.

Today's recipe was
zest of two lemons, 100g water, 30g muscavado, brought to boil
Juice of two lemons added
300g fizzy water added.

The muscavado is a bit caramelly, so won't be using that again, back to white sugar. Seemed a bit sweet too though.

Anyone have beloved lemonade/coridal recipes they want to share?

rubadub

No recipe but I will add that most soft drinks like coke or 7 up are about 10-11% sugar. So any recipie with more than that may be sickly sweet. I would prefer less for lemonade, lilt and cidona are about 5% sugar.

Citric acid is a common ingredient, this can be got cheaply in bulk in asian food shops (for sweet & sour) and in homebrew shops. Chemists can charge a fortune as they typically have small pots.

Muscavado would have a strong molasses taste, I would go for unrefined demerara before it.

Alun

This is the recipe I use, from my mum's old Good Housekeeping cookery book ...

3 lemons
175g (6 oz) sugar
900ml (1.5 pt) boiling water

Wash the lemons and peel off the rind thinly with a potato peeler. Put the rind and sugar into basin or large jug and pour on the boiling water. Cover and leave to cool, stirring occasionally. Add the juice of the lemons and strain the lemonade. Serve chilled. Makes about 1.1 litres (2 pt).

rubadub

That sounds like a lot of sugar. With wine making when sweetening wine the old saying was "you can always add more sugar but you can't take it out" so best start low first.

You can make a strong sugar syrup with a little water and sugar and heat in the microwave if you want to add more.

Caster sugar dissolves easier and is often the cheapest sugar in supermarkets these days, even though they will have far less stock of it.

Satriale

I put a little zest in my blender, peel and de-seed three lemons, a few leaves of mint, around 750mls water, whizz, strain pulp, add sugar to taste.

Alun

Satriale wrote: »

I put a little zest in my blender, peel and de-seed three lemons, a few leaves of mint, around 750mls water, whizz, strain pulp, add sugar to taste.

Whatever about the amount of sugar, with the recipe I gave above, the hot water serves to release all the aromatic oils from the zest. Its amazing how lemony the cooled down mixture smells even before you put the lemon juice in at the end. I can't imagine a cold version where you whizz everything together would achieve the same effect.

Satriale

Alun wrote: »

Whatever about the amount of sugar, with the recipe I gave above, the hot water serves to release all the aromatic oils from the zest. Its amazing how lemony the cooled down mixture smells even before you put the lemon juice in at the end. I can't imagine a cold version where you whizz everything together would achieve the same effect.

Probably not, I'll give yours a try this evening.

challengemaster

rubadub wrote: »

That sounds like a lot of sugar. With wine making when sweetening wine the old saying was "you can always add more sugar but you can't take it out" so best start low first.

You can make a strong sugar syrup with a little water and sugar and heat in the microwave if you want to add more.

Caster sugar dissolves easier and is often the cheapest sugar in supermarkets these days, even though they will have far less stock of it.

Sugar saturates at a ratio of 2:1 at room temp anyway, and if you heat it up to 4:1

Sugar syrup would be the easiest to use for sweetening.

janmaree

My grandfather made delicious lemonade (cordial) which had to be diluted before drinking. The ingredients list is written in the back of Mum's "All in the Cooking I"! There's no method there but I think I can remember how he made it well enough.

3 lemons - washed and very thinly sliced
2 pounds of white sugar
1 ounce of citric acid
half ounce of tartaric acid
3 pints of boiling water

I remember being there for the bottling and I think everything was stirred well first to dissolve the sugar etc., then left to sit overnight. My grandfather would then squeeze the fruit to mash it up a bit before he bottled it. It was a little cloudy but the flavour was fantastic. It was a long time ago but I think my recollection is fairly accurate. Hope it's of some use.

P.S. Should have said that he would have scooped out the fruit solids before bottling! Probably fairly obvious!