Lemonade

six houses, So I don't. I can't imagine that it would have been on my street because it would have been completely pointless. So your trick or treating just sucked. Well, we had to go other places. Did you have to take a car to go other places? Yeah? Drive over to a friend's house who lived in a big neighborhood that I was so jealous of. That's a good friend to have. I feel like we've had this conversation before. Probably we've had every conversation before by now. Yes, but

this is not about Halloween. This is about the origins of lemonade, and also of the lemon itself. Yeah, so I did not know this, Chuck. We have no idea where the lemon came from none. We know that it was a higher It's a hybrid of a sour orange and a citron um, so we know that it was crafted by human hands, but we have no idea who did this, where they did it, and exactly when they did it, which I find fascinating. I liked lemons before, now I'm in love with them. Yeah, and I believe

didn't you talk about citrons in the Pompei episode. That's what you were getting there, right, right, But I didn't realize that they were citron's right, you were like those weird big lemons that don't have any juice and are all rind. Yeah the size of your head. Yeah, that's about right. But uh, you know, everyone knows you can't get a lot of Jews from a citron. So what you need if you wanted to make lemonade was a

real lemon. And apparently they have traced at least the precursor to lemonade, uh to medieval Egypt, where they made something called cosh Cob not cash Cab the Great TV Show or kush Kari the guy who handled the tart bail out. Uh. Oh, that's rights kash Karai. Uh fermented barley combined with mint, rude, black pepper, and citron leaf. And I could see you actually trying to make a cocktail out of this in ancient cocktail. Yeah, I had to look up rue. It's like a very pretty meadow flower.

I'm not sure what it would taste like, but yeah, they had me at fermented barley. Really there's some Yeah, there's some extra vodka in there in your set. Like I love fermented anything. I love it, man, I'm crazy about kombucha. I love pickles, all of anything. If you ferment anything, I will eat it. Throw an old shoe in a vad of vinegar, He'll eat it in a month.

If if I go, I should say, when I eventually go to Iceland, I will be trying that fermented shark that's supposed to be like the nastiest thing in the world. I will try it because I love fermented stuff. Yeah, no, thanks. Uh. There's another thing that came out of Um Egypt I think as well, called Katarmazat, and it's lemonade. There's really no other way to put it. And it was made in at least the tenth century, so again medieval times

in Egypt. Um. It was either created or sold or consumed or all three of those by the Jewish community in Cairo. Um, and they just basically added sugar and lemon juice together to make katarmazat, which again is that's lemonade. And I think earlier than that, honey was probably what people used. But you know, lemon's are so tart you need some sugary agent to cut that and make it drinkable for sure. But we so we know that, um, they made something from something like maybe citron or if

not lemon. The first reference to a lemon tree is from the tenth century as well, in an Arabic book I'm Farming by a guy named Acustas al Roumi, and he was the first to mention a lemon try. Ever, so we know that they were around by then. They may have been around for a few hundred years by then from what I saw, I think northern India, and then it was in Italy by two d This is lemons,

not lemonade. Yet. We haven't reached lemonade exactly yet. Yeah, so if you want to talk about what we think of modern lemonade, you need to go to seventeenth century Europe, where in Paris. In fact, they even have a day supposedly August. August sixty. Uh, it made its debut, which was a sparkling version of sparkling water, lemon juice and honey. Yeah. Man, have you ever added just sparkling water to lemonade? No? But I drink those uh things that we used to

have here in the office that are so delicious surge. No, I can't remember the name. Jolt. It's the one where you peel like the foiley paper off the top of the can. First. Oh, Sam, pellegrina, Yeah, the pellegrino lemon. I don't know, drink many of them because they're like super sugary and stuff so good, but they're so delicious. Yeah, and like their blood orange, they're grapefruit. All of them

are so good. Yeah, you're right. They are pretty sugary though, and if you read the back of the can, you're like, whoa, it's like a coke. Yeah exactly. So that's you know, I gotta avoid that stuff, but it's worth it though. Once in a while, you got to treat yourself chuck. Yeah.

So these vendors in Paris would sell the stuff from tanks on their back and it was wildly successful across Europe because it is so refreshing, and apparently even in sixteen seventy six it was so popular that the vendors got together and formed a union, eliminate union called the Campagnie de lemonardils nice work. And then eventually it hit a bigger craze because of a man named Joseph Priestley, probably related to Jason Priestley, I think clear. We've talked

about him in the nitrous oxide episode. Yeah, he invented the thing that made carbonated water. I guess was that before Mr Swept Yes, okay, no, maybe maybe contemporaneously. Yeah, I think he was around the same time. He was in the late eighteenth century, maybe mid eighteenth century. But yeah, Schwebt came up with his thing in the seventeen eighties, right, So that made it even more popular with this fizzy version. Uh. And let's take a quick break and then we'll move

across the pond to America right after this. Alright, dude, so we've made it across to the United States, a journey. By the eighteenth century, um lemonades all over America, and again people are adding like sparkling water or soda to lemonade, which I want to encourage it. It's so good, it's um. And by about the time of the the late nineteenth century lemonade it was pretty popular. People liked it um and the Temperance movement actually clamped onto it and said,

this is a really good alternative to liquor. You want some liquor, forget about it. Just drink some sparkling lemonade and you'll you'll be as trash as you want. Yeah, especially if you enjoy it in its best form, which is to add liquor. All right. I think the Temperance movement was like, don't do that. Yeah, it was. It was apparently sun kissed even back then, which I didn't know it was. Around back then they had a slogan that said goodbye to liquor, his to lemonade. Yes, everyone went,

that's a lame substitute. They said, do we have to choose? So there was actually a period in UM in the nineteenth century eighteen seventy seven to eighteen eighty one where if you were invited to a white house dinner or function or something you were not going to be served liquor, you would probably you probably get in big trouble because Rutherford B. Hayes, he was the one who um who signed that um that executive order to apparently to curry

favor with the the Prohibition party. UM. But his wife was very well known as a teetotaler. She was a big time into temperance movement. His wife Lucy Lucy Hayes, and she was dubbed lemonade Lucy because UM, people, I guess wanted to to poke fun at her for her beliefs and that wasn't a very good job. And she sighed and said, well, I guess it's better than liquor, Lucy. They said, we hadn't thought about that. So I didn't know that lemonade had a circus connection, did you. Nope,

I had no idea that this was a thing. But apparently lemonade, and especially pink lemonade has a circus connection, uh, and that it came from the or at least in eighteen seventy nine from West Virginia's Wheeling Register newspaper told a story about how the circus turned lemonade pink. And there are a couple of different many different versions, but the two U two stories that stuck of how this happened. One is sounds like it could be delicious, and one

is really gross. Yeah. So one is found in a nineteen twelve obituary in the New York Times for a guy named Henry E. Allett. And this would have happened years and years before because he ran away as a boy to join the circus. And this, this story is that he was um. He accidentally dropped some red colored cinnamon candies into a out of lemonade and just said, well, I'm not going to throw this away, and he sold it as pink lemonade and people loved it. I bet

that's good. That's what I'm thinking, is that? And what are the little cinnamon candies that we ate when we were kids. Cinnamon candies? You remember their name? They were like right next to the lemonheads. Yeah, oh um, I remember, yeah, red Hot. It's a good job. The other one I remember is Alexander the Grape. The other I remember is Boston Baked Beans, Yeah, which are not actually beans, they're nuts. They're candy coated peanuts. Such a weird name. It is

like have you ever had Boston cottage cheese? It is not that God, but this pink lemonade a bet with a like a little hot cinnamon. I bet that's a pretty delicious thing to drink. It could be sure like today when you make pink lemonades usually like red food coloring or something like that. But back in the day after pink lemonade was created, Um, what's Dr Kellogg's name, the guy from Battle Creek, Oh, I can't remember his

first name. Well, he um, he came up with a recipe that uses like either grenadine or cranberry juice or something like that to make it pink and just kind of slightly alter the flavor. Right. The other origin story, though, that is gross that I mentioned was from fifty seven, and this is when a circus concession worker was in a big hurry to make a batchel of lemonade, grabbed the first water they could find, which apparently was a washtub full of pink water from a performer's dirty pink tights.

And they used that and people enjoyed it. Well, I don't think they knew what the source was of the pink water. That's pretty gross, that is, but either way, so we're gonna go with the other one. The Henry E. Allett went, Okay, yeah, the red hots agreed. Well that's it for lemonade, right, Yeah, I got nothing else, unless actually, should we mention the make lemons out of lemonade origin? Oh yeah, good call man. Yeah. Apparently this was a borrowed phrase by Elbert Hubbard in nineteen fift for an

obituary for a humorous named Marshall Pickney Wilder. And Wilder was three and a half feet tall, and he was a world famous, kind of household name comedian, and at one point he didn't want people to be stigmatized, and he said something like Fate handed me a lemon, but I've made lemon ade of it, and that's the earliest place that people can find that. Good for that guy. That's awesome. I got anhing else. It's a great origin story.

Well I don't either. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck, you can go to the Stuff you Should Know dot com. It's got all of our social media links there and you can send us emale to Stuff podcast How Stuff Works dot com.