Lemon Soda – Old Fashioned Recipe

February 10, 2023

Lemon Soda

5 from 1 vote

Course: DrinksCuisine: American

Servings

servings

Calories

kcal

Total time

minutes

Learn how to make an old fashion lemon soda

Ingredients

US Metric

1.5 oz 45 ml Lemon Syrup
1/2 oz 15 ml Lemon Juice
8 oz 240 ml Soda Water

Directions

Technique: Saxe Soda Shake
Combine syrup and juice in a cocktail shaker.
Add one medium or two small ice cubes to the cocktail shaker and shake until the ice fully melts.
Pour the chilled and aerated syrup into a collins glass without a strainer.
Slowly pour the soda water down into the top of the drink. This will build both body and a foam head.

Recipe Video

Making A Old Fashion Homemade Lemon Soda

An old fashion lemon soda is very different from today’s store-bought lemon-lime sodas. It tastes more like a sweet sparkling lemonade than a sprite. Adding a little lemon juice adds a bit of extra sourness to offset the sweetness and makes for a complex and flavorful lemon soda.

How To Make Lemon Syrup

A Basic lemon syrup is made of:

2 cups Lemon Juice
2 cups Granulated Sugar
1 tsp Lemon Extract

You can add two optional ingredients: 1/4 tsp citric acid, yellow food coloring, and 3 grams lecithin powder. The citric acid adds additional acid and lemon flavor that helps retain the lemon flavor once the syrup is diluted. While it doesn’t affect the flavor, a small amount of yellow food coloring helps with the appearance of the soda. Simply add 3 drops of yellow food dye to 3 cups of lemon syrup. The lecithin powder acts as an emulsifier and a foaming agent. It helps add a nice stable foam head to your soda or cocktails. For more information about old fashion homemade lemon syrup check out my full article

How To Get A Nice Foam On Your Sodas.

It was typical for high-end sodas in the late 1800s to have a nice foam on top. Similar to high-end molecular gastronomy restaurants today, a nice soda fountain would ensure that some drinks had an air or foam on top as you sipped your drink. The foam provides both a creamy texture and olfactory stimulation. These were called foaming agents, and in the 1800s, soap bark or other extracts were added to syrups to provide foam when shaken and mixed with soda water. A popular one today in the United States is propylene glycol, and while it is “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) in the US, it is banned for consumption in the EU. Another modern alternative, and the one I use, is adding lecithin to my syrups. Lecithin is flavor neutral, a natural emulsifier that provides a nice foam, and is often taken as a health supplement. It is also the foaming agent many high-end restaurants use to make foams for food. So I’ll add 0.5% of the total syrups weight of lecithin powder to my syrups as a foaming agent. Check out my lemon syrup recipe for exactly how that is done.

If you want to learn more about this topic and make your drinks better, check out De Forest Saxe’s 1894 book “Saxe’s New Guide Hints to Soda Water Dispensers.