In his 1921 memoir, “The Ways of the Circus,” the lion tamer George Conklin tells of the time that his brother, Pete, following a touring circus to promote lemonade, ran out of water for his concession stand.
With nary a spring or a properly close by, a determined Pete sneaked into the dressing tent and stole a bath of rosy water, into which Fannie Jamieson, a bareback horse rider, had simply wrung out her pink tights. Into his new, albeit soiled, provide, Pete stirred tartaric acid and lemon items, and he offered it as strawberry lemonade to nice success. And so, in 1857, pink lemonade was born. Or was it?
A competing story credit Henry E. Allott with inventing pink lemonade: At 15, he ran away from dwelling to promote concessions with one other touring circus. Someday, in line with Allott’s obituary in The New York Instances, he unintentionally dropped purple cinnamon candies into his product however offered it anyway. Even then, it turned out, pink was a compelling advertising technique.
If these rose-tinted tales really feel spun to you, then you definately’re proper on the cash. “These are nice tales, however I don’t assume we should always take them actually,” says Betsy Golden Kellem, a circus historian and a trustee of the Circus Historic Society.
“Cutting up jackpots,” she calls it, which in circus custom means spinning and swapping warfare tales to construct not only a sense of group but additionally a world of characters. The circus is a present, in any case, and pink lemonade is one in every of its most vibrant props.
A toddler of the circus, each extraordinary and synthetic.
Kellem, the writer of the upcoming “Leaping Via Hoops” (Feminist Press, 2025), which focuses on girls and gender efficiency within the Nineteenth-century circus, considers pink lemonade “sort of a cultural shorthand” for the circus. Its whimsical cotton-candy colour indicators that you simply’ve stepped into the realm of the spectacle, a diffusion of the extraordinary and the unreal.
The factor is, pink lemonade hardly ever, if ever, included any precise lemon juice. Save for a handful of slices (reused from batch to batch as an phantasm of freshness), lemons weren’t a giant a part of the unique recipe. They have been too costly, Kellem says.
As a substitute, an acid was used, and for homeowners of circus concession stands, the acid of alternative was tartaric. (Nowadays, citric acid is extra generally utilized in fountain and bottled merchandise, like Minute Maid and Tropicana, and in powdered mixes, like Nation Time, Kool-Assist and Crystal Gentle. It’s why they style the best way they do.)
An 1807 advert in The Tub Journal marketed one of many first synthetic lemonade mixes, “Albin’s Patent Candy Acid,” which promised to impart “as wealthy a flavour because the best and freshest Fruit.” No lemons required. All one needed to do was stir a few tablespoons (“in line with palate”) right into a half-pint of water.
Sadly, deadly white powders is also mistakenly offered for tartaric acid. In 1889, The Brooklyn Instances Union printed a warning to boycott lemonades “doctored with acid” after 50 individuals in Woodstock, Ontario, have been reportedly poisoned at a picnic the place lead-acetate-spiked lemonade was served.
There are numerous methods to dye lemonade pink with out poisoning your visitors. Many dwelling brewers at present splash some grape juice into their glasses, which brings each colour and taste. (Tartaric acid happens naturally in grapes.) Cranberry juice works too, as a result of what’s pink however a deficiency of purple? For a psychedelic sizzling pink, strive a smidgen of beet juice, as the Southern food blogger Monique Kilgore (of Divas Can Cook) smartly suggests.
If it’s summer time the place you might be, then the longest however most scrumptious option to pink lemonade is a juicy, ruby-rose syrup out of your favourite seasonal fruits and berries: rhubarb for child pink; raspberries for royal pink; strawberries for sundown pink; and cherries for vermilion pink.
You’ll be able to stir the syrup right into a pitcher of lemon juice and water, or you may pull from it as you’d a sugar bowl for particular person glasses of lemonade. This recipe yields a hydrating drink whose taste comes principally from the fruit, together with many contemporary lemons and their tart juice; simply sufficient sugar to melt the citrus; and a pinch of salt, which lends brightness with out heaviness, hydration with out sickly sweetness.
If fresh-fruit syrup is exterior your wheelhouse (or endurance), then strive stirring a bit citric acid right into a pitcher of normal lemonade, as my friend, the writer Allison Robicelli, does, realizing very properly that it’s not simply the colour that makes lemonade pink.