Lemon Cream Soda – Old Fashioned Recipe

Lemon Cream Soda

Lemon Cream Soda

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

60

kcal
Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make an old fashion lemon cream soda

Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz Lemon Syrup

  • 1/2 oz Vanilla Cream Syrup

  • 8 oz Soda Water

Directions

  • Technique: Saxe Soda Shake
  • Combine syrup and vanilla cream syrup in a cocktail shaker.
  • dd 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.

Featured Video

What Does A Lemon Cream Soda Taste Like?

The lemon cream soda is fantastic and tastes like a lemon custard pie. The mild tartness of the lemons blends perfectly with the sweet vanilla cream syrup. And using homemade fresh lemon syrup provides a complex and deep lemon flavor that artificial lemon syrups can’t match.

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 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 Make Vanilla Cream Syrup

A nice vanilla cream syrup is:

  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 2 cups whole milk
  • 2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

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 vanilla cream 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.”

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Lemon Soda – Old Fashioned Recipe

Lemon Soda

Lemon Soda

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

1

servings
Calories

48

kcal
Total time

3

minutes

Learn how to make an old fashion lemon soda

Ingredients

  • 1.5 oz Lemon Syrup

  • 1/2 oz Lemon Juice

  • 8 oz 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.

Featured 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.

Recipe Resources

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Lemon Syrup – Old Fashioned Recipe

lemon syrup

Lemon Syrup

0 from 0 votes Only logged in users can rate recipes
Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings

20

servings
Calories

80

kcal
Total time

15

minutes

Learn how to make an old-fashioned lemon syrup. This recipe makes a little over 3 cups (750 mLs) of syrup.

Ingredients

  • 1.5 cups Lemon Juice

  • 2 cups Granulated Sugar

  • 1 tsp Lemon Extract

  • Optional Ingredients
  • 1/2 tsp Citric Acid (Flavor Enhancer)

  • 3 g Lecithin Powder (Foaming Agent)

Directions

  • Add lemon juice to a stovetop pot and bring to a light simmer. Add the sugar and stir till dissolved.
  • Remove from the heat and stir in the citric acid.
  • Once the syrup has cooled moisten the lecithin powder with an ounce of water. Once the lecithin is fully dissolved, stir in the lecithin and lemon extract.
  • Store in the refrigerator or freeze for storage.

Featured Video

Homemade Lemon Syrup

Homemade lemon syrup is significantly better than store-bought lemon syrup. Most store-bought lemon syrups contain essential lemon oil, citric acid, simple syrup, and yellow food dye. Not that there is anything wrong with that, as those ingredients make good lemon syrup, but one made with real lemon juice as the base is more complex with a deeper and more flavorful taste. Remember, too, this is a syrup, so it should be sweet. The desire with lemon syrup is often to make it a little sour, but that can be done by adding lemon juice to a drink’s recipe.

Making Fruit Syrups With Real Fruit Juices

It’s not always possible to make fruit syrup with actual fruit juice, but the ones made with real juice are much better. Many mass-produced syrups are simple syrups flavored with a combination of esters, essential oils, and extracts. Esters are acid and alcohol combinations whose byproducts taste like fruit to humans. For example, ethanol and butanoic acid bond into ethyl butanoate, which tastes like pineapples. Naturally occurring esters in beer production produce its characteristic fruit flavors. When esters are used to flavor foods, they are listed as artificial flavors. Flavors made from essential oils and extracts are listed as natural flavors. For example, those bright red, clear cherry syrups at stores are just simple syrup with bitter almond, cherry stone extract, and red food dye. No juice at all.

This isn’t a bad thing. Essential oils have a fantastic flavor and is the preferred method for making herb and spice flavored syrups; some prefer artificial ester flavors to real ones. I LOVE artificial grape flavor, which is methyl anthranilate. But these tend to be one-dimensional flavors, making them easy to recognize as unnatural. Real fruit juice has a complex flavor: water-soluble flavors, metals, salts, bitter flavors, acids, carbohydrates, etc. A syrup made with a combination of real fruit juice, essential oils, and extracts will have a rich, complex flavor that no average store-bought syrup can match.

When To Add Citric Acid To A Syrup.

Adding a small amount of citric acid will significantly enhance the flavor of your fruit-based syrups and make their flavor pop even when diluted. Here is a quick explanation of balancing flavors.

Traditional flavor structure is broken into four groups (ignoring umami as it’s not applicable here). The four groups are salty, sour, sweet, and bitter. And it is the interplay of these four groups that create a flavor profile. Flavor profiles can be balanced or unbalanced. Being unbalanced is not a bad thing. It’s just a choice, like adding a salted rim to a margarita or sweet and sour sauce, but a balanced profile is usually the goal. Salty, sour, and sweet all counter each other in a flavor triangle, with bitter being the odd one out as only sweet balances it. Now back to adding acids to syrups.

In the case of lemon syrup, a little citric acid balances the sweetness and makes for a more noticeable lemon flavor. if the only flavor is sweet then it overwhelms the taste buds and inhibits your ability to taste the lemon. A little acid will cut through the sweetness and activate additional taste buds, resulting in a more complete tasting experience. In the case of lemon syrup, it’s not quite as necessary as with cherry syrup, orange syrup, etc. but so much sugar is added and the syrup is reduced enough that a little additional citric acid helps. But again, it’s not fully necessary.

When To Add A Foaming Agent To Syrups.

Realistically all syrups should have a foaming agent. There are many drinks that should be cold, still, and foamless, but that can be controlled by how the drink is mixed. 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.

Again many drinks contain syrup that should be foamless, like a mint julep, an old-fashioned sazerac, etc., but that can be controlled by stirring the drink instead of shaking it.

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