Orgeat Lemonade, Jerry Thomas’s Almond Lemonade from 1887
Reader ratingsHalf a lemon, a spoonful of sugar and a good measure of almond orgeat syrup, shaken with ice and water and finished with berries: the orgeat lemonade of Jerry Thomas’s 1887 bar guide.
- Recipe makes
- 1 large glass, about 10 fl oz
- Prep
- Total
Orgeat lemonade over crushed ice with berries and straws, beside half a lemon and a bottle of almond syrup.
The story behind the recipe
Orgeat lemonade is plain lemonade with almond syrup in it: half a lemon, a spoonful of sugar and half a wine-glass of orgeat syrup, shaken with ice and water and served with straws. Jerry Thomas printed it in the 1887 edition of his Bar-Tender’s Guide, in the bar glass he used for his punches, and it is the same almond syrup and the same half lemon that go into his brandy punch.
More syrup than the punch
Turn back thirty-six pages and Thomas’s Orgeat Punch takes “1½ table-spoonful of orgeat syrup” with its brandy and lemon. His lemonade takes “½ wine-glass,” about 2 tablespoons, so the glass without the brandy carries the larger share of almond. It also keeps the sugar, a full “table-spoonful of powdered white sugar” on top of the syrup.
The recipe sits in a run of lemonades in the 1887 book. Soda Lemonade and Egg Lemonade come just before it, and Fine Lemonade for Parties, a gallon at a time, comes just after, followed by the fizzing Soda Nectar. Like the Egg Lemonade, it is shaken, and it ends: “ornament with berries in season, and serve with straws.”
Orgeat itself had changed by then. Eighty years earlier it was a drink of its own, almonds beaten with orange-flower water and thinned with milk and water, as in the Orgeat, Almond Milk with Orange-Flower Water of 1807. In a bar book of the 1880s it was a syrup in a bottle, poured by the spoonful.
Read more about this recipe
Making it today
Thomas doesn’t say how to make the syrup, so we use the Orgeat Syrup of a 1920 drinks book, made without bitter almonds, or a good bought one. A wine-glass in Thomas’s day held 2 fluid ounces, so half of one is 2 tablespoons. We read his large bar glass as a 12-ounce tumbler, a third of it in ice, with about 3/4 cup of water to fill it. By our arithmetic, the sugar and the syrup together come to about 30 grams of sugar in the glass, roughly 10 grams per 100 ml once the ice melts, so cut the spoonful of sugar if you want it less sweet. How lemonade went from a Paris guild to the soda fountain is told in A Short History of Lemonade.
Orgeat Lemonade.
(Use large bar-glass.)
Take 1 table-spoonful of powdered white sugar
½ wine-glass of orgeat syrup.
The juice of half of a lemon.
Fill the tumbler one-third full of ice, and balance with water. Shake well, ornament with berries in season, and serve with straws.
Recipe makes: 1 large glass, about 10 fl oz
Ingredients
My drinksFor 1 large glass, about 10 fl oz. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for 1 large glass, about 10 fl oz.
- Superfine sugar1 tbsp
- Orgeat syrup2 tbsp
- Fresh lemon juice (1/2 lemon)1 1/2 tbsp
- Crushed ice1/2 cup
- Cold water3/4 cup
- A few berries in season, to finish
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 1 tbsp superfine sugar
- 2 tbsp orgeat syrup
- 1 1/2 tbsp fresh lemon juice (1/2 lemon)
- 1/2 cup crushed ice
- 3/4 cup cold water
- a few berries in season, to finish
Equipment
Citrus juicer
Cocktail shaker
Large tumbler, about 12 fl oz
Straws
Instructions
Put the superfine sugar, the orgeat syrup and the fresh lemon juice in a shaker and stir until the sugar dissolves.
Add the crushed ice and the cold water, close the shaker and shake well for about 10 seconds.
Pour everything, ice and all, into a large tumbler.
Drop a few berries in season on top and serve it with straws.
Nutrition
160calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- 1 large glass, about 10 fl oz
Roughly estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for granulated sugar, lemon juice and blanched almonds, using our orgeat syrup recipe, for one glass.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is one glass. Shake no more than two at a time.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Changes from the source: Thomas gives no size for the large bar glass or for the water; the 12-ounce tumbler and 3/4 cup of water are our reading. Superfine sugar, which dissolves quickly, stands in for his powdered white sugar. Stirring the sugar into the syrup and lemon before the ice goes in is ours, so it dissolves.
The orgeat syrup contains tree nuts. Shake the bottle before you measure it, since the almond oil rises.
For the brandy version from the same book, see Orgeat Punch.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
Jerry Thomas, The Bar-Tender’s Guide; or, How to Mix All Kinds of Plain and Fancy Drinks (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1887), “Orgeat Lemonade,” pp. 107–108
See the original pages (scan at Internet Archive) (opens in a new tab)
Recipe details
- Drink
- Alcohol-free
- Drink family
- Sodas & Soft Drinks
- Region
- American
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1880s
- Base
- Almonds
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- Dry January
- Season
- Summer