A very simple recipe, because I was in the
middle of moving house.
Fresh lemonade is easy to make, and citrus
fruit is easily available. In the past, citrus fruit were extremely expensive,
and lemonade was something special, not just a drink for children. The
recipe I used can be found in a seventeenth century French cookbook, in a chapter on digestives and mulled wines.
The picture on the right shows the orangery of Versailles. Orangeries were named
after the orange. They were the newest fad for the rich in the seventeenth
century, greenhouses to let all kinds of exotic plants (like citrus trees)
hibernate. In the summer the potted plants were wheeled outside to decorate the
intricate formal gardens.
The original recipe The recipe can be found in Le Confiturier
Français (edition in English translation
p.494). The Confiturier was published anonymously 1660 (Scully 2006 p.106
note 155). There is only one impression, in 1667, that names La Varenne as
author. According to Terence Scully it is by no means certain that La Varenne
is the author, but at the very least he had inspired the person who wrote the
Confiturier.
The full title of the Confiturier is: Le Confiturier François;
ou La manière de faire toutes sortes de Confitures, Liqueurs, & Breuvages
agreables. Two other cookbooks that are certainly written by La Varenne are Le cuisinier François (1651)
and Le Patissier François
(1653). Together, the these three books have been translated into English by Scully.
(more on François Pierre La
Varenne)
Lemonade.
Get a pint of water and into it put half a pound of sugar, the juice of six
lemons and two oranges, the peel of half a lemon and [half] an orange that
you have pressed; blend the water well in two very clean vessels, pouring it
back and forth several times from one into the other, and strain it through
a white serviette.
(Translation by T. Scully)
List of ingredients:
6 lemons
2 oranges
6 deciliter (2 1/2 cups) water or sparkling water
225 gram (2 1/4 cup) icing sugar
Preparation in advance:
Pour boiling water over one lemon and one orange, to melt the layer of wax (this
applies also to organic fruit). Grate the peel of half the lemon and half the
orange (or of the whole orange, La Varenne is unclear).
Preparation:
Squeeze the citrus fruit, be careful with the peeled lemon and orange (or grate
them after squeezing). Add water, sugar and peel. Instead of pouring the mixture
from one vessel into antoher, you can also pour it in a shaker and shake. Pour
the lemonade through a cloth or paper towel. Keep refrigerated.
Lemon and orange: These belong to the citrus family that originates in
the East, from China and North-East India to Australia (because the citrus
family is so ancient that it was already in existence when Australia and Asia
were part of the same continent).
Citrus fruit are attractive because of their exuberant colours (bright green,
yellow and orange), they carry in them a a combination of bitter, sweet and
sour, and their skin is very aromatic because of the oil just below the surface
(in the 'pores'). That typical citrus smell is hardly noticeable if you sniff an
orange in the store. To keep their freshness citrus fruit -even the organic
ones- are treated with a thin layer of wax. That is not harmful, and when you
just want to eat the flesh or use their juice you can totally ignore it. But
when you want to use the skin for peels you'll have to remove the wax first.
Since wax melts when heated, all you have to do is pour boiling (or hot) water
over the fruit. The wax will melt away. Rinse the fruit, pat it dry, and you
will be overwhelmed by the lovely scent!
There are many kinds of citrus fruit, but according to Harold McGee
only three of those are the ancestors of all others, citron (Citrus medica)
which is used for candied peel, mandarin (Citrus reticulata) and
pummelo (Citrus grandis of maxima). But if I'm reading my
sources
Davidson and McGee correctly, there is a fourth
ancestor, lime(Citrus
aurantifolia). At least, I can't find the combination of the three
'arch-citrusses' that would have resulted in the mandarin. But lemons
came into existence in two stadia: a hybrid of citron and lime then combined
with pummelo.
The origin of oranges is also muddy. Bitter or sour orange (Citrus aurantium)
seems to have no ancestry, all I can find is"[they] come from a different species than the kinds described above [i.e.
sweet oranges, C.M.]" (McGee 1994 p.376), sweet orange (Citrus sinensis)
is a hybrid of mandarin and pummelo. But why both are called 'orange' remains in
the dark. Maybe because they're both about the same size and ... well ...
orange. Lemonade is made with sweet oranges. These were still a novelty in
seventeenth century Europe, the first mention dates from the end of the
fifteenth century. Bitter oranges were already harvested on Sicily in the
eleventh century. By the way, sour oranges are seasonal fruit, you can only buy
them in winter (January/February). Marmelade is made with sour oranges. To use the peel: first remove the wax layer as described above. You can
use a fine grater, or a lemon zester. But if you ever need larger pieces of
peel, you can best use a flexible knife. Place the skin white side up on a
cutting board, let the knife rest with its tip on the board near the skin, and
cut away as much of the white as you can. With some practice you can end up with
several square centimeters of peel without a trace of white left on it. This can
be used to cut out figures for decoration.
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