Old-Fashioned Lemonade Recipe

I love cookbooks. I have a huge collection of these suckers, some dating back to the 1800's complete with notes from the original owner of the book. Those are my favorites.  

In one of my oldest cookbooks I found a recipe for lemonade that was easy & sounded delicious. I made it for the first time last week for hubby's Birthday & we all loved it. 

The ingredients are simple:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups water

1 1/2 cups fresh squeezed lemon juice

zest of 1 lemon

Optional: sprig of mint & thin slices of lemon

Step 1: Mix sugar & water in pot, completely dissolving sugar. Cook on medium heat to boiling. Boil for 5 minutes. 

Simple syrup starting to boil

Source

While sugar & water are cooking:

Step 2: Roll lemons. This wasn't in the original recipe, it's just my awesome way to get the juice to come more freely out of the lemon. Another tip is to use room temperature lemons, because cold lemons will "hold" in their juice; you'll get more juice from a room temperature lemon. If you store lemons in the fridge, nuke the lemons in the microwave for a few seconds to get them to release their juice. Squeeze lemons to get 1 1/2 cups of juice. 

Rolling lemon before juicing

I added some of the pulp to my
lemon juice, but you can leave it out

Step 3: After 5 minutes of boiling, pour simple syrup into a quart jar or pitcher. Let cool for a few minutes.

Step 4: Add lemon juice & zest to simple syrup. Stir. 

Step 5: Place in fridge & cool completely. Lemon syrup can be kept in fridge up to 3 weeks.

To use:

Mix 1 part lemon simple syrup to 4 parts cold water. Pour over ice. Add 1 mint sprig & 1 slice of lemon to each glass.

You can make 1 glass at a time or a pitcher.

Enjoy!