November 14, 2018 • 13 mins
Ever wonder where lemonade came from? Let’s up the stakes a little, what about pink lemonade? Well wonder no more! Join Josh and Chuck as they (briefly) cover the history of putting lemons together with sugar and water and coming up with something great.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Shorty. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry. Let's get things started. Yeah, let's get it started.
And here. Did you ever have eliminated stand growing up
at all? I believe I did, but it was kool aid? Actually,
who am I kidding? It was flavoring to your cult leader.
I don't. I think I might have had one at
(00:26):
some point, but I, you know, very famously grew up
on a in the woods, on a street with like
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
(00:47):
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
(01:09):
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
(01:30):
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
(01:51):
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
(02:14):
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
(02:37):
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.
(03:01):
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
(03:25):
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
(03:47):
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,
(04:11):
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,
(04:31):
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
(04:51):
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
(05:13):
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
(05:36):
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,
(05:57):
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,
(06:20):
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,
(06:56):
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.
(07:17):
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,
(07:39):
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,
(08:01):
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
(08:24):
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
(08:47):
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
(09:07):
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
(09:30):
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
(09:50):
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
(10:12):
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
(10:35):
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,
(10:56):
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
(11:18):
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
(11:38):
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
(12:00):
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
(12:22):
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.
Hey, and welcome to the Shorty. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry. Let's get things started. Yeah, let's get it started.
And here. Did you ever have eliminated stand growing up
at all? I believe I did, but it was kool aid? Actually,
who am I kidding? It was flavoring to your cult leader.
I don't. I think I might have had one at
(00:26):
some point, but I, you know, very famously grew up
on a in the woods, on a street with like
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
(00:47):
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
(01:09):
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
(01:30):
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
(01:51):
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
(02:14):
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
(02:37):
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.
(03:01):
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
(03:25):
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
(03:47):
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,
(04:11):
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,
(04:31):
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
(04:51):
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
(05:13):
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
(05:36):
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,
(05:57):
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,
(06:20):
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,
(06:56):
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.
(07:17):
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,
(07:39):
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,
(08:01):
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
(08:24):
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
(08:47):
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
(09:07):
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
(09:30):
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
(09:50):
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
(10:12):
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
(10:35):
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,
(10:56):
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
(11:18):
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
(11:38):
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
(12:00):
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
(12:22):
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.
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