BrainStuff Classics: What's the History of Lemonade?

Who were the first people to drink lemonade? How did it turn pink? Learn the folklore behind lemonade in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/what-is-history-lemonade.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hey brain Stuff Lauren vogebam here with an episode from
the brain Stuff archives, and this one discusses the long
and fascinating history of a common drink, from temperance to
the plague lemonade. Hey brain Stuff Lauren vogebam Here, water, sugar,

(00:22):
and lemon juice. The recipe for lemonade hasn't changed much
in more than a thousand years. Tart or sweet, pink
or yellow, clear, cloudy or carbonated. For as long as
life has been handing out lemons, people the world over,
from ancient Egyptians to Beyonce, have been making lemonade. The
exact origin of the lemon itself has not been easy
to ascertain, but new research has clarified its lineage as

(00:46):
a sour, orange and citron hybrid. A February study in
the science journal Nature reveals the discovery of fossilized leaves
and the yu Non province of China proves citrus has
been around since the late Miocene epoch, some eight million
years ago. The earliest record of the precursor to lemonade
hails from the Mediterranean coast of medieval Egypt. Kush cub

(01:07):
was made from fermented barley combined with mint, rue, black pepper,
and citron leaf, and the medieval Jewish community in Cairo consumed, traded,
and exported bottles of a sugary lemon juice concoction called
guitarmazot through the thirteenth century. While the citron, which is
like a lemon but larger with a super thick rind
and not much pulper juice, was likely known by the

(01:29):
ancient Jews and throughout the Mediterranean before the Common Era,
there's no proof that lemons were around in pre Islamic times.
The mosaics of Rome and frescoes of Pompeii depict images
of citrus fruits resembling lemons and oranges, but there's no
paleobotanical or written evidence that they existed there. The earliest
written reference to the lemon tree is in a tenth
century Arabic book on farming, and in the late twelfth century,

(01:53):
the personal physician to the Muslim leader Saladin wrote a
treatise on the lemon, bringing it to the attention of
a wider metatru Adian audience. Flash forward to seventeenth century
Europe lemonade debuted in Paris on August sixteen thirty Made
of sparkling water, lemon juice, and honey, menders sold it
from tanks strapped to their backs. While popular across Europe,

(02:16):
lemonade became so fashionable in Paris than sixteen seventy six
the vendors incorporated and formed a union called the Company
the Lemonadiers. The lemonade craze even helped Paris fend off
the plague, as we talked about in a former episode.
Britain's contribution to lemonade craze came by way of chemist
Joseph Priestley, who invented an apparatus for making carbonated water.

(02:39):
By the seventeen eighties, Johann Schwepp, a German Swiss jeweler,
had developed a new method of carbonation using a compression
pump that made mass production more efficient. By the eighteen thirties,
schwepps fuzzy lemonade was readily available around Europe. By the
eighteenth century, lemonade had made its way to America along
with waves of European immigrants. During Victorian era, the women's

(03:01):
temperance movement pushed lemonade as an alternative to alcohol. One
sun kissed slogan of the day read goodbye to liquor,
Here's lemonade. From eighteen seventy seven to eighteen eighty one,
the White House banned alcohol from all state dinners and
other functions, Although President Rutherford be Hayes made the decision
himself as a way to court the Prohibition Party. Critics

(03:22):
of the band dubbed his wife Lucy, a renowned teetotaler
lemonade Lucy and the Moniker. Stuck and the circus has
a starring role in lemonades long history. By the nineteenth century,
both ice and the traveling circus had hit the scene,
and both were taking off. The first known mention linking
pink lemonade to the circus comes from West Virginia's Wheeling

(03:43):
Register in eighteen seventy nine. Circus lore has many tales
of how it's lemonade turned pink, but historians find two
of them the most viable. In one, a concession worker
invents pink lemonade when he accidentally drops red colored cinnamon
candies into a vat of regular lemonade. In proverbial the
show must go on style, he serves lemonade anyway, and

(04:04):
the people lap it up. And the other story, a
harried concession worker, in need of water to make a
fresh batch of lemonade for an impatient line of thirsty customers,
grabs the first liquid he sees, and it turns out
to be a tub of wash water in which a
performer has just wrung out her dirty pink tights. He
uses it to make his new and improved strawberry lemonade,

(04:25):
and the crowd goes wild. Story has it that from
then on sales doubled, and henceforth no top notch circus
was ever without pink lemonade. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous advice to
make a lemonade out of adversity probably became famous thanks
to a phrase borrowed by Albert Hubbard in nineteen fifteen
for the obituary of an actor, writer, and humorist Marshall

(04:47):
Pickney Wilder. Wilder, known for his brilliant stand up routines,
was a world famous, much beloved household name during a
time when jobs for people like him could only be
found in circus side shows. Standing three ft five inches
tall that's a little over in meter. With a severe
spinal deformity, he refused to stigmatize others or be stigmatized.
Fate handed me a lemon, he said, but I have

(05:09):
made lemonade of it. Today's episode is based on the
article The Fascinating History of Lemonade on how stuff works
dot com, written by Carrie Tato. Brain Stuff is production
of My heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works
dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. Four more

(05:29):
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