This recipe comes from Martin Luther Holbrook’s 1888 book Eating for Strength, a book designed to promote what the author considered healthy eating and drinking habits. A physician and health reformer, Holbrook believed that avoiding meat and stimulants such as alcohol and tobacco was essential to good health. His book provides a variety of vegetarian and alcohol-free recipes such as this one, alongside the latest “scientific” nutrition advice of the day.

American Temperance Beverage (half of original recipe)

• 6 lemons
• 1 pound sugar
• 6 cups cold water
• 2 cups raspberries
• 1/4 pound sugar
• half of a pineapple

1. Thinly pare the lemon peels with a vegetable peeler and place them in a container. Squeeze all the lemons over the peels and let sit for about 2 hours.
2. Strain the lemon juice into a large bowl and add 1 pound of sugar (or adjust to taste) and 6 cups of cold water.
3. Mash the raspberries in a separate bowl with 1/4 pound of sugar (or adjust to taste), then add to the bowl with the lemons.
4. Cut half of a fresh pineapple into thin slices, mash in a separate bowl, then add to the large bowl.
5. Stir everything together until the sugar dissolves, then serve.

Tasting notes:

I cut this recipe in half so that it would fit in my pitcher, but I may have forgotten to cut the amount of sugar for the raspberries in half…so I ended up adding 1/2 pound of sugar instead of a 1/4 pound. As a result my beverage was very, very sweet in a way that reminded me of those CapriSun juice pouches I loved as a kid. Now I prefer my drinks more tart, so if I made this again I would probably leave out the sugar for the raspberries altogether and just use the 1 pound of sugar for the lemons. That’s still a lot of sugar! I recall that the 1848 recipe for Effervescing Fruit Drink I made was also overly sweet, so perhaps 19th-century tastes were more inclined to sugary drinks than mine. Measuring mishaps aside though, this was still a delicious and refreshing beverage.

References:

Holbrook, M.L. (1888). Eating for strength. New York: M.L. Holbrook & Co. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Eating_for_Strength/ERVIAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0