Cold, non-alcoholic : apple cider

Alcoholic:
Distilled spirits: Whiskey, Rum, Madeira, Sherry, Brandy
Brewed: beer, mead & metheglin, (both made with honey)
Wines & wine mixes: raisin, elderberry, orange, gooseberry, currant, cherry, birch, quince, clary or cowslip, turnep, raspberry, blackberry, damson, grape, apricot, balm, lemon,), hippocras (wine & spice mix), Stepony, shrub, punch
Cream drinks (served warm or cold): caudle, sack posset, syllabub
Medicinal waters (some with, some without alcohol): Cordials, plague water, heart water, hysterical water, fever water
Spirits(also medicinal): cinnamon, clary, mint,saffron, rosemary flowers, beazor.

SOURCES: The New Art of Cookery According to Present Practice, Richard Briggs [1792], Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess

What types of beverages were readily available to pioneer-era Americans?

Non-Alcoholic (Hot)
Coffee & coffee substitutes
Cream Coffee (whipped cream)
Chocolate (made with scraped, unsweetened chocolate)
Cocoa
Tea

Non-Alcoholic (Cold)
Cold Coffee
Ice Tea (with or without lemon)
Lemonade
Milk Lemonade
Cider
Raspberry Vinegar
Harvest drink (sugar, ginger & vinegar, aka Switchel)
Carbonated water (soda water, with or without flavored syrups)
Mineral water

Alcoholic
Distilled spirits: rum, whiskey, gin, bourbon, rye
Wines: black currant, blackberry, currant, grape, gooseberry
Brandies: blackberry, cherry
Punch: claret, champagne
Egg nog
Sack Posset
Shrub
Beer
Small beer: ginger beer, Ginger pop, spruce beer
Mead (honey beer)
Champagne

SOURCES:

• Jennie June's American Cookery Book [1870]: Tea, Coffee, etc. & Wines & Drinks
• Buckeye Cookery Book [1877] :Drinks
• Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City/Kelly J. Dixon

According to the food historans, coffee was highly prized for its taste and perceived medicinal qualities. Pioneers improvised creative methods for achieving drinkable pot of coffee. Success varied according to supplies and the exprience of the cook. A person who could brew a delicious pot of coffee was highly respected. When *real* coffee was unavailable, substitutes were employed. Chicory, acorns, and a variety of other items were pressed into service when necessary.

"In the predominantly rural United States of the mid-nineteenth century, people bought green coffee beans (primarily from the West or East Indies) in bulk at the local general store, then roasted and ground them at home. Roasting the beans in a frying pan on the wood stove required twenty minutes of constant stirring and often produced uneven roasts. For the affluent there were a variety of home roasters that turned by crank or steam, but none worked very well. The beans were ground in a manufactured coffee mill or a mortar and pestle. Housewives usually brewed coffee just by boiling the grounds in water. In order to clarify the drink, or "settle" the grounds to the bottom, brewers employed various questionable additives, including eggs, fish, and eel skins...The routine American ruination of coffee must have surprised sophisticated European visitors. During the first half of the nineteenth century there was a veritable explosion of European coffee-making patents and ingenious devices for combining hot water and ground coffee, including a popular two-tier drip pot invented around the time of the French Revolution by Jean Baptiste de Belloy, the Archbishop of Paris. In 1809 a brilliant, eccentric expatriot named Benjamin Thompson--who preferred to be known as Count Rumford--modified the de Belloy pot to create his own drip version. Rumford also made a corred brewing pronouncement: Water for coffee should be fresh and near boiling, but coffee and water should never be boiled together, and brewed coffee should never be reheated. Unfortunately for American consumers, however, Rumford's pot and opinions did not travel back across the Atlantic. Nor did the numerous, elegant brewers from France and England...Typical North American coffee of the period was boiled until it was a bitter brew badly in need of mik and sugar to make it palatable."
---Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, Mark Prendergrast [Basic Books:New York] 1999 (p. 46-7)

"Virtues of Coffee: Coffee accelerates digestion corrects crudites, removes colic and flatulencies. It mitigates headaches, cherishes the animal spirits, takes away listlessness and languor, and is serviceable in all obstructions arising from languid circulation. It is a wonderful restorative to emaciated constitutions, and highly refereshing to the studious and sedentary. The habitual use of coffee would greatly promote sobriety being in itself a cordial stimulant; it is a most powerful antidote to the temptation of spiritous liquors. It will be found a welcome beverage to the robust labourer, who would despise a lighter drink.---Family Receipt Book, 1819."
---Early American Beverages, John Hull Brown [Bonanza Books:New York] 1966 (p. 100)

"For Improving Coffee: To valetudinarians and others, the following method of making coffee for breakfast is earnestly recommended as a most wholesome and pleasant jentacular beverage, first ordered by an able physician. Let one ounce of fresh ground coffee be put into a clean coffee-pot, or other proper vessel well thinned: pour a pint and a quart of boiling water upon it, set it on the fire, let it boil thoroughly, and afterwards put by to settle: this should be done on the preceding night, adn on the following morning pour off the clear liquor; add to it one pint of new milk; set it again over the fire, but do not let it boil, Sweetened to every person's taste, coffee thus made is a most wholesome and agreeable breakfast, summer, or winter, with toast, bread and butter, rusks, biscuits, &c. This process takes off that raw, acidous, and astringent quality of the coffee, which makes it often disagree wtih weak stomachs. It should not be drank too warm. A gentleman of the first fortune in the kingdom, after a variety of medical applications in vain, was restored to health by applying to the above beverage morning and afternoon.---Family Receipt Book, 1819"
---ibid (p. 100)

"Coffee Milk: Boil a dessert spoonful of ground coffee in about a pint of milk, a quarter of an hour; then put into it a shaving or two of isinglass, and clear it; let it boil a few minutes, and set it on the side of the fire to fine. This is a very fine breakfast, and should be sweetened with real Lisbon sugar. Those of a spare habit, and disposed towards affections of the lunghs, would do well to make this their breakfast.---Mackenzie's 5000 Recipes."
---ibid (p. 100-101)

A sampler of early American coffee instructions: I, II, III, IV, V & VI
[Click title of book for complete citation]

ABOUT PIONEER COFFEE
According to primary documents pioneer (aka "cowboy") coffee was a hit or miss affair. Same as today, everyone had their own idea as to correct proportions and cooking time. Filters ranged from fine cloth to non-existent. Coffee grinders were often carried, and beans were ground on site. Ground coffee was also available for purchase (in towns, packed in tins), but would probably not have produced as fresh a brew.

"Although Peter Burnett advised his family, "If you are heavily loaded let the quantity of sugar and coffee be small, as milk is preferable and does not have to be hauled," his counsel was the exception. Most emigrants took the advice of Anna Maria King: "Fetch what coffee, sugar and such things you like, if you should be sick you need them." By the time the travelers were nearing either Oregon of California, coffee was sometimes the only provision left. Catharine Amanda Scott Coburn, and Oregon pioneer, recalled those times: 'We still had coffees, and, making huge pot of this fragrant beverage, we gathered round the crackling camp fire--our last in the Cascade Mountains--and, sipping the nectar from rusty cups and eating salal berries gathered during the day, pitied folks who had no coffee.' A story about coffee illustrates the relationship between Ellen Tootle and her husband, newlyweds on their way to Colorado to look over the possibilities of expanding their dry-goods business to Denver: 'Mr. Tootle says I cannot do anything but talk, so would not trust me to make the coffee. Boasted very much of his experience. He decided to make it himself, but came to ask me how much coffee to take, for information, I know, but he insisted, only out of respect. The coffee pot holds over 1 qt.; I told him the quantity of coffee to 1 qt. He took that, filled the coffee pot with water then set it near, but not on the fire. I noticed it did not boil, but said nothing. When they drank it, they both looked rather solemn and only took one or two sips. I thought it was time to have an opinion upon it. As Mr. Tootle would not volunteer one, I inquired how the coffee tasted. He acknowledged it was flat and weak, but insisted I did not give him proper directions. He consented to let me try it at supper time.' Later that evening Ellen Tootle had her chance to prove her culinary skills: 'I was all impatience to try my s skill in making coffee. I watched it anxiously until it was boiling and waited with the greatest solicitude and I must acknowledge some misgiving, for them to taste it. Oh, but I was rejoiced and relieved when they pronounced it very good.' Before making a cup of coffee, the green coffee beans had to be roasted in a skillet and then ground in a grinder. The names of the beans indicated their place or origin, and we find Rio, Havana, and Java coffee beans listed for sale in the mid- nineteenth century. If tea was preferred, the buyers chose from a list of brands that featured Gunpowder, Imperial, Young Hyson, Souchong, and Poushchongre. Not until after the Civil War did manuracturers devise good way of preserving the flavor of preroasted or ground coffee, sometiems referred to as essence of coffee. But from March 30, 1850, St. Louis Missouri Republican this ad suggests that they certainly tried. 'California Outfits. Ground Coffee--Put up in water-proof and air-tight packages and guaranteed to retain its strength and flavor for years.' The credit for a good roasted coffee goes to Arbuckle Brothers, whos offices were in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company patented a method of sealing in the raosted flavor by coating the beans with a mixture of egg white and sugar. Roasted coffee beans in paper bags were then shipped throughout the West, and Arbuckle coffee was the most popular brand."
---Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail, Jacqueline Williams [University of Kansas Press:Lawrence KS] 1993 (p. 38-41)

How much did coffee cost? Pioneer provisions list.

ABOUT CIVIL WAR SOLDIER COFFEE
Coffee was on the list of rations for both North and South. When it was available, it was highly prized.

"Coffee wes issued to Yankees rather steadily, in the form of raw beans that the men first had to roast without burning and then crack with their rifle butts or somehow grind before boiling with water. At every meal the coffee came out, and if there was a halt of more than a few minutes on a march, some men were bound to start a fire and begin making the brew, often mmerely to be told to throw it out unfinished as they resumed the march. While the coffee's caffeine may have been stiumulating to their spirits, the boiling also providentially killed much of what inhabited the poor water usually to be had. Confederates, by comparison, cut off from sources of importation, usually had to substitute chicory, burnt corn and peas, and even potatoes and peanuts, with far less statisfactory results. "Our coffee when we first went out was issued to us green, so taht we had to roast and grind it, which was not always a success, some of it being burnt, while some would be almost green," said Bellard. "In roasting it we put a quantity of it in a mess man, and placing the pan over the fire would have to keep stirring it round with a stick in order to have it roasted as evenly as possible." They could never properly grind the beans, cracking them instead, and inadequate roasting could turn the beverage awful."
---A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray, William C. Davis [Stackpole Books:Mechanicsburg PA] 2003 (p. 27)

"In 1861, the standard daily ration in the Union army was based on the assumption that not all required ingredients would be available at all times and places. As a result, it operated on an equivalent or what some called the "lieu therof" or the "or" system... Each day a soldier ought to be issued three-fourths of a pound of pork "or" bacon "or" one and one quarter pounds of fresh "or" salt beef...His bread ration was to be eighteen ounces of fresh bread or flour or theree-fourths of a pound of hardtack or one and one quarter pounds of cornmeal. Additionally, each 100-man company was to share eight quarts of peas or beans or ten pounds of rice, ten pounds of coffee or one and a half pounds of tea, fifteen pounds of sugar, four quarts of vinegar, and two quarts of salt. In 1861 the Confederate War Department adopted precisely the same ration allowance as the old United States prewar, execpting that it recognized the scarcity of coffee and sugar by reducing those from ten pounds of coffee to six and from fifteen pounds of sugar to twelve. In any event the Southern commissary was rarely able to provide either of those items or those quantities after 1861, ar at any distance from principal commissary and transport centers...In 1863, responding to the rigors of campaigning, the Union War Department revised the ration to...[for every 100 rations] ten pounds of green coffee beans or eight pounds of roasted beans, or one and one half pounds of tea..."
---ibid (p. 45-6)

"Finally there was coffee. Soldiers could go for days without food, if only they ahd their coffee. In the Confederacy it became as highly prized as shoes, and commanded outrageous prices in times of scarcity. Substitutes were tried using chicory or parched corn, but nothing approaced the real article. As a result, coffee was the item most often requested when Rebs informally met Yanks between the lines for illict trading. Virginia tobacco being the commodity exchanged. In the North, by contrast, there was rarely any shortage of coffee beans, and many regiments were actually issued special rifles, one per 100-man company, with a coffee grinder built into the butt stock. The best coffee was slow roasted over a low fire, "until of a chestnut brown color and not burnt, as is so commonly done." It was to be boiled briskly for two minutes, then take from the fire at once, a little cold water thrown in, then the boiler's contents poured through a piece of flannel after it had settled for five minuutes."
---Civil War Cookbook, William C. Davis [Courage Books:Philadelphia:PA] 2003 (p. 16)

"The manner in which each man disposed of his coffee and sugar ration after receiving it worth noting. Every soldier of a month's experience in campaigning was provided with some sort of bag into which he spooned his coffee; but the some sort of bag he used indicated pretty accurately, in a general way, the length of time he had been in the service. For example, a raw recruit just arrived would take it up in a paper, and stow it away in that well known receptacle for all eatables, the soldier's haversack, only to find it a part of a general mixture of hardtack, salt pork, pepper, salt, knife, fork, spoon, sugar and coffee by the time the next halt was made. A recruit of longer standing, who had been through this experience and had begun to feel his wisdom-teeth coming, would take his up in a bag made of a scrap of rubber blanket or poncho; but after a few days carrying the rubber would peel off or the paint of the poncho would rub off from contact with the greasy pork or boiled meat ration which was his travelling companion, and make a black, dirty mess, besides leaving he coffee-bag unfit for further use. Now and then some young soldier, a little starchier than his fellows, would bring out an oil-silk bag lined with cloth, which his mother had made and sent him; but even oil-silk couldn't stand everything, certainly not the peculiar inside furnishing of the average soldier's haversack, so it too was not long in yielding. But your plain, straightforward old veteran, who had shed all his poetry and romance, if he had ever possessed any, who had roughted it up and down had ever possessed any, who would roughed it up and down "Old Virginny," man and boy, for many months, and who had tried all plans under all circumstances, took out an oblong plain cloth bag, which looked as immaculate as the every-day shirt of a coal-heaver, and into it scooped without ceremony both his sugar and coffee, adn stirred them thoroughly together. There was method in this plan. He had learned from hard experience that his sugar was a better investment thus disposed of than in any other way; for on several occasions he had eaten it with his hardtack a little at a time, had got it wet and melted in a rain, or what happened fully as often, had sweetened his coffee to his taste when the sugar was kept separate, and in consequence had several messes of coffee to drink without sweetening, which was not to his taste. There was one and then a man who could keep the two separate, sometimes in different ends of the same bag, and serve them up proportionally. The reader already knows that milk was a luxury in the army. It was a new experience for for all soldier to drink coffee without milk, But they soon learned to make a virtue of necessity, and I doubt whether one man in ten, before the war closed, would have used the lactic fluid in his coffee from choice. Condensed milk of two brands, the Lewis and Borden, was to be had at the sutler's when sutlers were handy, and occassionally milk was brought in from the udders of stray cows, the men milking them into their canteens; but this was early in the war."
---Hardtack and Coffee: or The Unwritten Story of Army Life, John D. Billings, facsimile 1887 edition [Univeristy of Nebraska Press:Lincoln NE] 1993 (p. 123-5)

ABOUT COFFEE SUBSTITUTES
When *real* coffee was unavailable, a variety of natural substitutes were employed. The final brew varied from somewhat acceptable to downright poor.

"Coffee Substitutes: As substitutes for coffee, some use dry brown bread crusts, and roast them; other soak rye grain in rum, and roast it; other roast peas in the same way as coffee. None of these are very good; and peas so used are considered unhealthy. Where there is a large family of apprentices and workmen, the coffee is very dear, it may be worth while to use the substitutes, or to mix them half and with coffee; but, after all, the best economy is to go without. French coffee is so celebrated, that it may be worth while to tell how it is made; though no prudent housekeeper will make it, unless she has boarders, who are willing to pay for expensive cooking. The coffee should be roasted more than is common with us; it should not hang drying over the fire, but should be roasted quic; it should be ground soon after roasting, and used as soon as it is ground. Those who pride themselves on first-rate coffee, burn it and grind it every morning. The powder should be placed in the coffee-pot in the proportions of an ounce to less than a pint of water. The water should be poured upon the coffee boiling hot. The coffee should be kept at the boiling point; but should not boil. Coffee made in this way must be made in a biggin. It sould not be clear in a common coffee-pot. A bit of fish-skin as big as a ninepiece, thrown into coffee while it is boiling, tends to make it clear. If you use it just as it comes from the salt-fish, it will be apt to give an unpleasant taste to the coffee: it should be washed clean as a bit of cloth, and hung up till perfectly dry. The whites of eggs, and even egg shells are good to settle coffee. Rind of salt pork is excellent. Some people think coffee is richer and clearer for having a bit of sweet butter, or a whole egg, dropped in and stirred, just before it is done roasting, and ground up, shell and all, with the coffee. But these things are not economical, except on a farm, where butter and eggs are plenty. A half a gill of cold water, poured in after yo take your coffee-pot off the fire, will usually settle the coffee. If you have not cream for coffee, it is a very great improvement to boil your milk, and use it while hot.---Amercian Frugal Housewife, 1830."
---Early American Beverages (p. 88-89)

"Acorn Coffee: Take sound a ripe acorns, peel off the shell or husk, divide the kernels, dry them gradually, and then roast them in a close vessel or roaster, keeping them continually stirring; in doing which special care must be taken that they be not burnt or roasted too much, both which would be hurtful. Take of these roasted acorns ground like other coffee) half an ounce every other morning and evening, alone mixed with a dram of other coffee, and sweetened with sugar, or with or without milk. This receipt is recommended by a famous German physician, as a much esteemed, wholesome nourishing, strengthening nutriment for mankind; which, by its medicinal qualities, had been found to cure slimy obstructions in the viscera, and to remove nervous complaints when other medicines have failed. Remark: Since they duty was taken off, West India coffees is so cheap that substitutes are not worth making. On the continent the roasted roots of the wild chicory, a common weed, have been used with advantaged. ---Family Receipt Book, 1819."
---Early American Beverages (p. 100)

Food historians generally agree Irish coffee is a relatively new invention. The exact date when the first brew was concocted is fuzzy. The introduction to the USA well is documented, thanks to the journalist who took the task upon himself.

"Irish coffee, also known as Gaelic coffee, is a beverage concocted from black coffee, sugar, and Irish whiskey, with a layer of cream carefully floated on the top. Despite its traditional-sounding name, it does not appear to be of any great antiquity, the first recorded references to it being from around 1950. It is said to have been invented at Shannon airport, near Limerick. Marketing managers of middle-brow restaurant chains seized on the concept in the 1970s, producing an array of variants based on other spirits (such as Caribbean coffee, with rum)."
---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford Univeristy Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 169-9)

"Irish coffee...According to a plaque outside the Buena Vista Bar in San Francisco, "America's first Irish coffee was made here in 1952. It was inspirationally invented at Shannon Airport [Ireland] by [chef] Joe Sheridan. it was fortuitously introduced by [newspaper writer] Stan Delaplane. It was nurtured to a national institution by [the bar's owner] Jack Koeppler." Sheridan actually created the drink in 1942 at Foynes Dock, where flying boats docked in World War II. it was promoted as of 1947 at Shannon Airport as an official welcoming beverage."
---The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 168)

"Although people have been lacing coffee with alcohol for years, Irish coffee...was supposedly invented in the winter of 1943 by Joe Sheridan, chef at Foynes Airport in Limerick, Ireland. The story goes that Sheridan, after hearing that a flight bound for New York had turned back owing to bad weather, mixed up a special drink to warm the exhausted passengers. Among the travelers was the writer Stanton Delaplane, who liked the concoction so much that he brought the recipe back to Jack Koeppler, bartender at the Buena Vista Hotel in San Fransico. Koeppler and Delaplane tried to recreate the drink, but the whipped cream kept sinking to the bottom. Koeppler eventually visited Sheridan in Ireland and learned the threefold secret of floating the cream--the coffee must be lightly sweetened, the cream must be not fresh and softly whipped, and the cream must be poured into the hot coffee over the back of the spoon. Irish coffee became a staple after-dinner drink in the United States in the 1950s. its popularity peaked it the 1970s..."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 714-5)

The Irish Coffee Story, as told by The Buena Vista Cafe, San Francisco
Additonal historic citings, courtesy of Barry Popik:

The first reference in the New York Times was published in 1955:
"You'll love Irish Coffee with magical Power's Irish Whiskey (7 years old-86 proof). Thousands of travel-weary passenger have tried and loved Irsih Coffee at the famous Shannon Airport. Now you can enjoy it right in your own home...Place one teaspoon of sugar in 6-oz Hot Toddy glass-or coffee cup. Pour in hot coffee. Add jigger Power's Irish Whiskey. Top with whipped cream. You'll love it!"
---Advertisement placed by Canada Dry Ginger Ale, Inc., New York Times, March 5, 1955 (p. 8)

"A drive to promote Irish coffee as a widely used drink is being pushed in this country. The effort was started yesterday at a reception at the Irish Products Center, 33 East Fiftieth Street, attended by a number of theatrical celebrities. Carmel Quinn, who sings Irish songs on the television, explained that Irish coffee consists of hot coffee, with sugar and Irish whiskey, topped by whipped cream. A special guest at the reception was Patrick Brady of Dublin, representing five big distillers who produce eight well known brands of Irish whiskey. After a few day here Mr. Brady will got to the West Coast, where he will spend about six months. The drink, originally served to Americans at Shannon Airport, first gained prominence in the West."
---"News of the Advertising and Marketing Fields," New York Times, October 2, 1956 (p. 53)

Lemonade is (along with several other popular food innovations) sometimes touted as having been "introduced" at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. This is not true. Culinary evidence confirms it was known long before then. Lemonade's rise to popularity in our country is generally attributed to the Temperance (anti-alcohol) Movement of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Pink lemonade also surfaced at this time.

Food historians tell us hunter-gatherers inhabiting northern regions used ice for storage and food preservation. This was a matter of practicality, not choice. Cooled drinks and frozen desserts, such as lemonade, iced tea & granita/sherbet were enjoyed by upper-class ancient civilizations. They were also sometimes prescribed as medicinals. Lemons are "Old World" foods. Early records place the origins of this drink in the Mediterranean region. This beverage was introduced to America by European settlers. Economics of the ice trade expanded the markets for cold drinks in the mid-nineteenth century.

The "prehistory" of lemonade:

Early history/Clifford A. Wright

About modern lemonade

"From its simple seventeenth-century beginnings as a drink made from lemon juice and water, usually with sugar, lemonade has diverisfied widely...The term is an adapation of French limonade, a derivative of limon...It was the first example in English of a word for a fruit drink ending in -ade (orangeade followed in the eighteenth century), but it was not really until the late nineteenth century that the suffix took on a life of its own with new formations such as cherryade, gingerade, and limeade."
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 188)

"Lemonade, which in its simplest form is a drink made with lemon juice, sugar, and water, has a history dating back at least to the thirteenth century, when Arab cookery books offered recipes for drinks made from lemon syrup. The Mongols enjoyed a sweetened lemon drink preserved with alcohol, and the Persians enjoyed sharbia, from which English "sherbet" derives. By the mid-seventeeeth century the drink was popular in Europe when limoadiers, street vendors in France, sold lemonade at modest prices. A lemonade recipe appeares in the 1653 English translation of La Varenne's The French Cook. Lemonade arrived in America no later than the eighteenth century, imported from the various European cultures of immigrants...lemonade's image underwent a transformation engendered by the temperance movement, which turned lemonade into a genteel Victorian drink...Modern technology also helped the juice flow...Lemonade's popularity rose unabated, prompting the 1901 New Orleans Times-Picayune's Creole Cook Book to proclaim, "Lemonade is among the most delightful and most commonly used of all Fruit Waters." Lemonade was also considered a tonic, served to those suffering from colds...or to invalids."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 30-1)

Grocer's notes, circa 1883:
"Lemonade. A beverage made from the juice of the lemon, for the purpose of allaying thirst. It is also used for medicinal purposes, when it is made either hot or cold, according to the complaint. The vendors of lemonade use citric or tartaric acid, or even a few drops of sulfuric acid, to make their mixture, and only slice a few lemons to float on the surface and please the eye. Most of the lemonade powders declared to be pure, are made in a similar way. Reliable brands of lime-juice are preferable, unless the fresh fruit is at hand."
---The Grocer's Companion and Merchant's Hand-Book [New England Grocer Office:Boston] 1883 (p. 74-5)

[1653]
"How to make Lemonade
It is made several waies, according to the diversity of the ingredients. For to make it with Jasmin, you must take of it about two handfull, infuse it in two or three quarts of water the space of eight or ten houres; then to one quart of water you shall put six ounces of sugar. Those of orange flowers, of muscade roses, and of gelliflowers, are made after the same way. For to make that of lemon, take some lemons, cut them, and take out the juice, cut it into slices, put it among this juice, and some sugar proportionately. That of orange is made the same way."
---The French Cook, Francoise Pierre, La Varenne, Englished by I.D.G. 1653, introduced by Philip and Mary Hyman [Southover Press:East Sussex] 2001 (p. 238-9)

[1769]
"Lemonade for the same use. To one quart of boiled water add the juice of six lemons, rub the rinds of the lemons with sugar to your own taste. When the water is near cold mix the juice and sugar with it, then bottle it for use."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, (1769), with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 172)

[late 1700s]
"To Make Sirrup of Leamons. First cut your leamons in 2 & pick out ye [the] stones & prick them well with a knife, & ye Juice will come out ye better. Then wring them as long as you can get out any Juice, & to every pinte of it take a pound of sugar. Set them on ye fire together & make them boyle as fast as you can, to a thin sirrup, for If you boyle it too much, it will candy presently. It will require a great many leamons to make a pound."
---Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery, transcribed by Karen Hess [Columbia University Press:New York] 1995 (p. 370-1)
[NOTE: Karen Hess adds this note: "On the medicinal virtues of lemons, Gerard says: "Two poundes of the juyce of Limons, mixed with the like quantity of the spririt of wine...and drunk at the first approach of the fit of an ague, taketh away the shaking presently." He cautions, however, taht "the Patient be covered warme in a bed, and caused to sweat."

[1845]
"Delicious Milk Lemonade. Dissolve six ounces of loaf sugar in a pint of boiling water, and mix with them a quarter of a pint of lemon-juice, and the same quantity of sherry; then add three-quarters of a pint of cold milk, stir the whole well together, and pass it thorugh a jelly-bag till clear."

"Excellent Portable Lemonade. Rasp, with a quarter-pound of sugar, the rind of a very fine juicy lemon, reduce it to powder, and pour on it the strained juice of the fruit. Press the mixture into a jar, and when wanted for use dissolve a tablespoonful of it in a glass of water. It will keep a considerable time. If too sweet for the taste of the drinker, a very small portion of citric acid may be added when it is taken."
---Modern Cookery for Private Families, Eliza Acton (1845) with an introduction by Elizabeth Ray [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1993 (p. 481)

[1869]
"Lemonade. Steep the peel of 6 lemons in 1 quart of syrup at 35 degrees F.; Press out the juice of the lemons; add 2 quarts of water, and filter the whole through a jelly-bag with some paper; Strain the syrup through a silk sieve; mix it with the filtered juice, and pour the Lemonade into glass jugs."
---Royal Cookery Book, Jules Gouffre, translated from the French and adapted for English use by Alphonse Gouffe [Sampson Low, Son, and Marston:London] 1869 (p. 567)

[1877]
Lemonade, Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping

[1884]
"Lemonade.--Squeeze the juice from one lemon and add one tablespoonful of sugar. Pour on one cup of boiling water, and cool. Or take hot for a cold, after retiring."
---Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D.A. Lincoln (facsimile 1884 reprint) [Dover Publications:Mineola NY] 1996 (p. 420)

[1891]
"Effervescing Lemonade.--Boil two pounds of white sugar with one pint of lemon juice; bottle and cork. Put a tablespoonful of syrup into a tumbler about three parts of cold water, add twenty grains of carbonate of soda, and drink quickly."
---Modern Home Cook Book: With Helps and Hints for the Household [Hurst & Company:New York] 1891 (p. 72)

[1892]
"Lemonade.--Use three large or four medium-sized lemons for each quart of water and from six to eight tablespoonfuls of sugar. Rub or squeeze the lemons till soft. Cut a slice or two from each, and extract the juice with a lemon drill; strain the juice through a fine wire strainer to remove the seeds of the pulp, and pour it over the sugar. Add the slices lemon, pour over all a very little boiling water to thoroughly dissolve the sugar; let it stand ten or fifteen minutes, then add the necessary quantity of cold water, and serve. Or rub the sugar over the outside of the lemons to flavor it, and make it into a syrup by adding sufficient boiling water to dissolve it. Extract and strain the lemon juice, add the prepared syrup and the requisite quantity of cold water, and serve."
---Science in the Kitchen, Mrs. E.E. Kellogg [Modern Medicine Publishing Co.:Battle Creek, MI] 1892 (p. 362)

[1906]
"Lemonade. Lemonade whould be made in the proportion of one lemon to each large goblet. Squeeze the lemons and take out any seeds. If you do not like the pulp strain the juice. Sweeten the drink well though that is a matter of taste. The pleasant tart taste should be preserved. Add water to the juice and when serving put cracked ice and a thin slice of lemon into each glass. E.J.C."
---The Blue Ribbon Cook Book, Annie R. Gregory [Monarch Book Company:Chicago IL] 1906 (p. 344)

[1913]
"Lemonade.
4 lemons
4 tablespoonfuls sugar
1 qt. Water, or a bottle of Apollinaris
Four lemons, rolled, peeled, and sliced; four large spoonfuls of sugar; one quart of water. Put lemons (sliced) and sugar into a pitcher and let them stand for an hour, then add water and ice. If you substitute Apollinaris for plain water you have a most refereshing drink."
---The American Home Cook Book, Grace E. Denison [Barse & Hopkins:New York] 1913 (p. 454)

[1920]
"Lemonade. Lemonade is entitled to the first place on the list of fruit beverags, refreshing as it is in itslef, and capable as it is of numerous variations. Proportions for mixing are 3 times as much sugar as lemon juice, and 6 times as much water, but it may be wise to hold back part of the sugar until after mixing, in case it should be too sweet. It is quite easy to add more sugar, but not so easy to add more lemon juice and water. In hot weather it is most convenient to have lemonade syrup "on tap." It will keep in the refrigerator for a week."
---What and How: A Practical Cook Book for Every Day Living [Greenwood Book Shop:Wilmington DE] 1920 (p. 27)

[1936]
"Lemonade or Orangeade.
2 tablespoons sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon or orange
1 cup water
Mix and stir until dissolved. Or boil sugar and water to a syrup, cool, add to juice. Serve hot or cold."
---The Settlement Cook Book, Mrs. Simon Kander [Settlement Cook Book Co.:Milwaukee WI] 1936 (p. 36)

[1944]
"Lemonade (Basic Recipe)
3/4-1 c. Granulated sugar
5 c. Water
3/4 c. Lemon juice
Skins 3 lemons
Combine sugar, 1 c. water and skins left after squeezing lemon juice. Simmer, covered, 6 min. Cool. Squeeze out skins and discard. Add lemon juice and remaining 4 c. Water. Carbonated water may be substituted for this water. Serve well iced with lemon slice garnish. Serves 4-5. Crn Syrup may replace half the sugar."
---The Good Housekeeping Cookbook, New edition, completely revised [Farrar, Rinehart:New York] 1944 (p. 81)

[1956]
"Lemonade. Combine in saucepan 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, rind of 2 lemons, cut into pieces. Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Boil about 1 min. Strain; discard rind. Cool. Add...1 cup fresh or frozen lemon juice (45 6o 6 lemons), 4 cups water (1 qt.). Pour over ice in pitcher or tall glasses. Amount: 6 to 8 servings."
---Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, revised and enlarged, Second edtion [McGraw Hill:New York] 1956 (p. 74)

[1963]
"Lemonade
HOMEMADE: Combine 2 cups lemon juice, 4 teasp. Grated lemon rind, 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar. Pour into glass jar; cover. Keep on hand in refrigerator.
To serve: Allow 1/4 cup syrup for each glass. Fill with ice cubes and water. (Nice tinted pink with grenadine.) Makes 2 2/3 cups syrup.
JIFFY:Just open a can of frozen or canned lemonade or pink lemonade concentrate; add water and ice as label directs; enjoy a pitcherful of luscious lemonade in no time at all."
---The Good Housekeeping Cookbook, Dorothy B. Marsh [Good Housekeeping:New York] 1963(p. 684)

[1973]
"Fresh Lemonade.
3 lemons, 3/4 cup sugar, Ice cubes, Maraschino cherries with stems, drained.
1. With a sharp knife, very thinly slice lemons crosswise. Discard end slices and seeds.
2. Put lemon slices into a large bowl or sturdy pitcher. Add the sugar.
3. With a wooden spoon or potato masher, pound until the sugar is dissolved and slices are broken.
4. Add 1 tray of ice cubes and 2 cups cold water. Stir until very cold.
5. To serve: Pour lemonade, along with lemon slices, into glasses. Garnish each glass with a cherry.
Makes 5 cups, or 4 tall glasses."
---The New McCall's Cookbook, Mary Eckly, food editor of McCall's [Random House:New York] 1973 (p. 72)

Iced tea was mass marketed to the general public at the 1904 Exposition in St. Louis (as were many other foods we now consider popular) but it was not invented there. Food history of full of lore and interesting stories that upon closer examination are not always supported by facts. This is the jist of the 1904 story (note the word debuted' is used rather than ' invented'):

"Iced tea debuted in 1904 at the Louisiana State Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Mo. According to the Tea Council, "The temperature was soaring and the staff in the Far East Tea House couldn't get any fair-goers to even look their way, let alone sample their tea. So they poured the hot tea over ice cubes and the drink quickly became the exposition's most popular beverage." --- Tea: a story of serendipity/U. S. Food & Drug Administration

Iced tea is mentioned in cook books, articles and traveler's diaries at least forty years before the Exposition that is credited for making it popular. It is possible that this beverage was first introduced as a medicinal drink, as suggested here:

[1861]
"Balm and Burrage Tea
These, as well as all other medicinal herbs, may easliy be cultivated in a corner of your garden...Take a balm and burrage a small handful each, put this into a jug, pour in upon the herbs a quart of boiling water, allow the tea to stand for ten minutes, and then strain it off into another jug, and let it become cold. This cooling drink is recommended as a beverage for persons whose system has become heated for any cause."
---A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, Charles Elme Francatelli, London [1861] (p. 92)
[Note: Mr. Francatelli was the head chef for Queen Victoria. He is often credited for introducing many popular Victorian food dishes and trends.]

"Iced tea appeared in the United States, the creation of some anonymous individual, prior to the Civil War. In 1860 a writer for Horace Greely's Tribune, Solon Robinson, published a small volume How to Live. In this appeared the sentence Last summer we got in the habit of taking the tea iced, and really thought it better than when hot. By 1871 the new beverage competed with iced milk, and iced water on hot summer days at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. In New York...By 1878, travelers found iced tea for sale on the Rock Island Railroad and a popular beverage in Sidney, Nebraska. Cookbooks began to offer recipes for iced tea and in 1886 Senators in their Washington offices were said to have had large coolers of it to mitigate the force of the weather.'"
---Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Food Encyclopedia, compiled by Joan Whitman [Times Books:New York] 1985 (p. 223)

"By the 1860s American were enjoying "iced tea," which was popularized at the 1903 St. Louis World's Fair by Richard Blechynden after finding he couldn't sell much hot tea in the summer's heat....Instant iced tea was introduced in 1953 under the label "White Rose Redi-Tea" by the Seeman Brothers of New York City."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 323)

"Exactly when the custom of drinking iced tea began is unknown, but it dates back at least to the 1860s, if not long before. A hot drink in vogue in the 1870s, tea a la Russe, made with sugar and sliced lemons, was also enjoyed cold. Iced tea was also available in the 1870s in hotels and on railroads."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 530)

A survey of iced tea recipes through time

[1877]
Iced tea and Lemon iced tea, Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping

[1884]
Iced Tea, or Russian Tea, The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D.A. Lincoln

[1887]
"Iced tea...Is now served to a considerable extent during the summer months. It is of course used without milk, and the addition of sugar serves only to destroy the finer tea flavor. It may be prepared some hours in advance, and should be made stronger than when served hot. It is bottled and placed in the ice-chest till required. Use the black or green teas, or both, mixed, as fancied."
---White House Cook Book, Mrs. F. L. Gillette, [L.P. Miller:Chicago] 1887 (p. 410)

[1908]
"Iced tea. The tea that is to be used for the day's conumption should be made in the early morning and in just the same way that it is made to be served hot. The quantity depends upon the number of persons to be served, and in hot weather this might well be multiplied by three. The best blend of tea for serving cold is equal parts orange Pekoe and English breakfast. This blend does not lose strenght in standing but ripens and softens in flavor. Tea must never be boiled. To make it as it should be, take fresh cold water, bring quickly to the "bubbling" boil, and let it continue several minutes. Scald out the teapot, which should be clean and dry, and measure into it as many level teaspoonfuls tea as cups will be required. Pour the furiously boiling water over the tea leaves and let steep on the back of the range four or five minutes, then strain off into a pitcher to cool. When quite cold set in the ice box. By drawing the tea off the eaves when just the proper strength it will be fresh and sweet, without the bitter taste of tannin it gets if allowed to stand too long on the leaves. Keep the pitcher set close to the ice or pour the tea in bottles and lay directly on the ice, thus offering more surface for cooling. When ready to serve, if the ice is above suspicion, break into pieces about the size of horse chestnuts, put in the glasses and pour the tea over them. If dependent upon the ordinary unsanitary ice, rinse the glasses out in cold water to make them cold, then fill with the culled tea but no ice. Slices of lemon, a whole clove dripped in each cup of tea as poured, a bit of pineapple, a sprig of mint or a peppermint cream are among the popular additions to iced tea."
---The Evening Telegram Cook Book, Emma Paddock Telford [Cupples & Leon:New York] 1908 (p. 188)

The history of milk is a complicated and interesting topic. Mother's milk has nurtured the human race from the dawn of time to present day. Generally, the emergence of milk as an industry traces back to the agricultural revolution, 10,000BC. Prehistoric hunter-gatherers captured animals but did not domesticate them. Once people had the wherewithall to settle down, they domesticated animals and learned to utilize their byproducts. Dairy foods (milk, cheese, yogurt) flourished. Pasteurization [1861] played a significant role in the history milk production.

"Throughout the history and prehistory of the human species, breast milk provided the major sustenance for a person's first year of life...It was also widely used in somen's healing remedies. In other words...[it] represented a significant part of the human food economy."
---Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink, E. Melanie DuPuis [New York University Press:New York] 2002 (p. 46)

"The milks of other species of mammal is one of humankind's most ancient foods--it was in fact the most significant single contribution of the Neolithic peoples' domestication of animals to the human diet. Over the millennia most speciaes of livestock have been milked, including in various parts of the world horses, donkeys, camels, buffaloes, and yaks (the only major exception is the pig...), but today in the West the term milk, unless further qualified, is generally taken to refer to cow's milk...The word milk is ancient too. It can be traced back to our Indo-European ancestors, who used a verb something like *melf- for wiping' or stroking'. Since the action of milking involved the pulling the hand down the animal's teat, this verb eventually came to mean milk'. But it was the Germanic languages that picked it up, in the form *meluks, as a noun."
---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 212)

"The oldest known record of animals being kept in herds and milked is a series of cave paintings in the Libyan Dahara, showing milking and perhaps cheese-making too, and possibly older than 5,000 BC. The Sumerians, around 3500 BC, and the Egyptians a few centuries later used milk and have left reliefs and records showing that they prepared curdled milk products."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 503)

"Domestication of cattle probably started because wild cattle were attracted to the fields of grain grown by early farmers and robbed these abundant supplies of food...Exactly when domestication took place is uncertain, but by 3000BC there is evidence for several well-defined breed in representations of cattle form both Mesopotamia and Egypt..."
---Oxford Companion to Food (p. 145)

"Although cattle have been domesticated for less than 10,000 years, they are the world's most important animal, as judged by their multiple contributions of draft power, meat, milk, hides, and dung...Evidence for the domestication of cattle dates from between 8,000 and 7,000 years ago in southwestern Asia. Such dating suggests that cattle were not domesticated until cereal domestication had taken place, whereas sheep and goats entered the barnyard of humans with the beginning of agriculture...As with sheep and goats, the process of domesticating cattle resulted in animals smaller than the wild progenitor. Dated osteological material from Neolithic sites establishes the transition from wild to domesticated...The Fertile Crescent has long been considered the place of initial cattle domestication, but that view tends to reflect the large number of excavations made there. Early signs of Neolithic cattle keeping have also been found in Anatolia (Turkey), where the osteological material at Catal Huyuk provides evidence of the transition from the auruchs of 8,400 years ago to cattle by 7,800 years ago. In short, it is still premature to specify where the first cattle were domesticated...Westward diffusion of cattle throughout Europe was tied to the invention of the wooden plow. The harnessing of a powerful animal to that device made it possible to greatly extend cultivation without a corresponding increase in human population..."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge], Volume One, 2000 (p. 490-2)

"The second unlooked-for benefit of animal domestication...was milk. The fact that animals suckled their young...must have been known from the earliest times, but the full value (and volume) of the milk that animals could be induced to supply to their new masters must have come as a revelation. Milk being highly perishable...a few hours would be enough to start it fermenting in the climate of the Near East. Depending upon the temperature and the kind of bacteria in the air, the curds might develop into something pleasant and refreshing, or something quite uneatable even by Neolithic peoples...Throughout much of history, and especially in hot climates, milk has always been most used in one or other of its soured or fermented forms."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers Press:New York] 1988 (p. 27-8)

"Archeologists excavating lake dwellings on the banks of Lake Neuchatel have found potsherds pierced with holes which date back to at least six thousand years BC. They conclude that these vessels could have been drainers for separating curds from whey...What kind of milk might the ancient lake-dwellers have been processing in this way?...Although domestication of goats and sheep was beginning to change the way of life of the Mediterranean peoples at this period, we do not yet know if they had reached the stage of milking the animals and making dairy produce to keep. Cows did not appear on the Alpine scene until after the Roman conquest of the Valais 53 centuries later...Noah's descendant Abraham, very rich in cattle' presented to him by Pharaoh, gave butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed' to the three angels who came to visit him (Genesis 18, viii). We can roughly situate that possible existing of the father of the Jewish nation in the second millennium BC...A kind of strip cartoon depiction on a polychrome Sumerian fresco of 2500BC....gives some idea of the methods used. It shows cows with their calves, still not very far from the primitive aurochs cattle, being milked by peasants on both sides of the gates of a corral...The milk is put into large, carefully cleaned jars...Goats and sheep will adapt easily to any climate and browse on any kind of weed; goats will eat most prickly plants as well. They long supplied most of the milk that was drunk or made in to butter and cheese. Cattle, worked to the bone as draught animals, provided hardly any. We may assume that the Babylonian cows gave milk only at calving time, whent they were enjoying a repite from work. Virgil does not seem very keen on cow's milk, at least, he recommends its use only for rearing calves."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell [Barnes & Noble Books:New York] 1992 (p. 113-4)

"Milk had an unusual status as a food item in the classical world, because milk, as such, will not keep (without the use of refrigeration or other modern techniques). So the drinking of fresh milk was a luxury shared by farmers and nomadic shepherds with those in cities and royal courts who were rich enough to pay for express delivery...Aristotle observes that sheep, goats and cows all produce more milk than is needed for their own offspring. These were the sources of most of the milk that Greeks and Romans used; mare's milk and ass's milk were also sometimes used. The milk of any of these five animals might be used as an ingredient in kykeon [a magical and medicinal drink]. Aristotle also refers to the drinking of camel's milk. Much of the milk that domestic animals produced was turned into cheese, a far more stable substance and an excellent food. Both milk and cheese were typical foods of shepherds."
---Food in the Ancient World from A to Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2003 (p. 217-8)

"Neither milk nor butter occurs among the lists of ingredients required by cooks in classical Greek comedy scenes. Milk is called for, incidentally, in only three of the Roman recipes of Apicius. In a pre-technological age milk, gala, was available as a beverage only to those who lived close to the land. Hence, in Greek literature, milk-drinking is a mark of the pastoral peoples who did not, like the Greeks themselves, live in towns."
---Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 1996 (p. 65-6)

"Sheep and goats were introduced into Britain by the first farmers. They may have brought cows and pigs with them as well, and in any case they must soon have begun to tame the native wild stock. Cattle were the most important animals in neolithic Britain, as their bones are far more numerous than those of other livestock on contemporary habitation sites...About 250 BC Britain's climate became drier and warmer, and animals could survivie more easily in the open...Cows supplied milk as well a meat, though the lactation period was much shorter than now."
---Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago: Chicago] 1991 (p. 62-3)

"Milk played a part in the diet of the people of Britain from the time when the first neolithic farmers brought their domestic cows, sheep and goats into the coutnry. At that period cow milk was the kind most often drunk; for cows, which could live off the leaves of the forest that covered almost the whole country, far outnumbered the grazing animals. Over several hundreds of years some parts of the woodland were gradually cleared, and by Bronze Age times there was more open terrain in which sheep and goats could be kept. Ewes, like cows, were milked; so also were she-goats."
---Food and Drink in Britain (p. 149)

"The pattern of animal husbandry changed only very slowly through the years following the Norman Conquest. But eventually the number of cattle on the manors rose as cow's milk came to be preferred to ewe's milk."
---Food and Drink in Britain (p. 78)

"The milking of ewes was abandon altogether by some farmers in the sixteenth century on the grounds that it took too much of the animal's strength...Ewe's milk was given up reluctantly, for it was thought, at least by some people, to be fulsome, sweet and such in taste that no man will gladly yield to live and feed withal'...MIlk and milk products were useful adjuncts to the cuisine of the gentry, and enriched certain of their dishes...The peasant's cow was his commonwealth', providing him and his family with butter, cheese, whey, curds, cream, sod (boiled) milk, raw-milk, sour-milk, sweet-milk, and butter-milk'...The well-to-do rarely consumed milk in its raw state, for it was known to curdle in the stomach, and was though to engender wind there..."
---Food and Drink in Britain (p. 156-7)

ABOUT MILK

• Prehistoric Briton's taste for milk
  
• Dairy cows introduced to America [1611]
• Milk history, science & technology
• Milk bottles & delivery
• Condensed milk
• Evaporated milk
• Malted milk & milk shakes

RECOMMENDED READING:

Nature's Perfect Food: How Milk Became America's Drink, E. Melanie DuPuis

Related food? Yogurt!

[1798]
"For Brewing Spruce Beer," American Cookery, Amelia Simmons

[1831]
"Beer," American Frugal Housewife, Lydia Maria Child [NOTE: Mrs. Child offers considers beer a healthy family drink.]

[1838]
"Spruce Beer," The Virginia House-wife, Mary Randolph [also includes ginger beer and molasses beer]

[1869]
"Root Beer: For each gallon of water to be used, take hops, burdock, yellow dock, sarsaparilla, dandelion, and spikenard roots, bruised, of each 1/2 oz.; boil about 20 minutes, and strain while hot, add 8 or 10 drops of oils of spruce and sassafras mixed in equal proportions, when cool enough not to scald your hand, put in 2 or 3 table-spoons of yeast; molasses two-thirds of a pint, or white sugar 1/2 lb. Gives it about the right sweetness. Keep these proportions for as many gallons as yo wish to make. You can use more or less of the roots to suit our taste after trying it; it is best to get the dry roots, or dig them and let them get dry, and of course you can add any other root known to possess medicinal properties desired in the beer. After all is mixed, let it stand in a jar with a cloth thrown over it, to work about two hours, then bottle and set in a cool place. This is a nice way to take alteratives, without taking medicine. And families ought to make it every Spring, and drink freely of it for several weeks, and thereby save, perhaps, several dollars in doctors' bills."---Dr. Chase's Recipes, 1869"
---Early American Beverages, John Hull Brown [Bonanza Books:New York]1966 (p. 101)

[1911]
Root Beer definition/description, The Grocer's Encyclopedia

[1925]
"Root Beer.--A non-alcoholic drink made from extracts of various roots and prepared for the fountain by the addition of syrup and carbonated water. This class includes Ottawa beer, sarsaprilla, and similar beverages which do not require the addition of cream and are mixed from syrup and carbonated water. It is the common practice to carbonate such beverages in tanks and draw them from the draught arm of the fountain, or from a special dispenser."
---The Dispenser's Formualry, compiled by The Soda Fountain Trade Magazine, [Soda Fountain Publications:New York] 1925, 4th edition (p. 29)

Hires Root Beer claims to be the oldest brand in the United States.

About Orange Julius & Smoothie King.

If you are researching the smoothie industry for business class, ask your librarian how to access consumer & trade magazine databases such as EBSCO's MasterFile, Business Source, ProQuest's Research II, Gale's Business and Company Resource and DIALOG's Business & Industry. Here you will find articles on companies, market data, consumer trends and pricing strategy. Ask your librarian about access...many of these databases may be available to you from your own home computer. All you need is a library card! The Juice and Smoothie Association may also be useful.

Food historians tell us hunter-gatherers inhabiting northern regions used ice for storage and food preservation. This was a matter of practicality, not choice. Cooled drinks and frozen desserts, such as lemonade, iced tea, and flavored ices, were enjoyed by upper-class ancient civilizations. Both lemons and tea are "Old World" foods. Early records of consumption place the origins of these drinks in the Mediterranean regions and Asia, respectively. These beverages were introduced to America by European settlers. Economics of the Ice trade expanded the markets for cold drinks in the mid-nineteenth century. Lemonade and iced tea (along with several other popular food innovations) are sometimes touted as having been "invented" at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. This is not true. Culinary evidence confirms both were known long before that year. Their rise to popularity in our country is sometimes attributed to the Temperance (anti-alcohol) Movement of the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

"Storing food and drink in low temperatures is an ancient practice The cold air of a natural cave or the cool environment of a well-insulated underground pit or chamber worked as natural refrigerators for grains and root crops. Furthermore, just as hunters on the arid plains found their kill would dry out in the sun, so hunters of the icebound regions must have discovered that meat left in the snow or freezing, icy winds would also keep, at least until it thawed. Keeping food cool slows down the bacterial action in food, thereby helping the food stored safely for longer, a process now known as refrigeration. Microoganisms do not like the cold. It slows down their metabolism and makes them sluggish, unable to reproduce...freezing does not actually destroy the organism; it merely puts them into a chilling limbo until they and the food they inhabit are defrosted. While the hunter may have temporarily lost some meat in the freezing snow, he might also have buried some "overkill" of meat or fish in the ground to hide it from predators or rival hunting parties....Sometimes, where the right conditions were available, the technique developed of freezing food to preserve it....In...northern regions, food became frozen unavoidably, and the fact that the food was preserved was a fortunate by unsought side effect... "In warmer regions, ice was only used for cooling, although people have enjoyed chilled drinks and cooled food in the most unlikely places. Ice pits and icehouses were known to have been built in Mesopotamia almost four thousand years ago, and the powerful and wealthy men and women of Persia, Egypt, Rome, and Greece were accustomed to being served cold drinks and chilled fruits even in the hottest weather. Alexander the Great ordered trenches to be dug at Petra, filled with winter snow, and covered with oak branches so that his soldiers could drink cooled wine in summertime. As well as chilling drinks, snow and ice were also used by physicians to treat patients with fever, inflammation, and stomach complaints. So all around the Mediterranean, snow was collected from the mountains and carried down to the cities, where it was sold daily or stored in ice houses. The snow was packed hard into pits and covered with branches, straw, leaf mats, or coarse cloth. The Chinese...were harvesting and storing ice by at least 1100 B.C....Sometimes the ice had to travel many miles. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egyptian royalty had their ice shipped from the mountains of Lebanon all the way to Cairo...Like sugar, ice became a part of the fabulous sparkling jewelery of banquets, with centerpieces of elaborate ice sculptures, sugar trifoni, chilly jellies, iced sherberts, and glass or silver bowls of ice-encrusted fruits...By the sixteenth century numerous palaces, estates, chateaux, abbeys, and monestaries throughout Europe, the Middle east, and China had their own icehouses. Soon, anyone with aspirations to elegant living had ice or snow houses built, and by the eighteenth century many of these had acquired architectural pretentions, with Gothic arches or Grecian pillars...The basic construction...changed little up to the nineteenth century...But ice was not just the preserve of the rich; in some parts of Europe the peasants erected simple ice stacks made from branches, heather, and pete near ponds, flooded meadows, lakes, and slow-moving rivers that froze in winterime. Although icehouses were principally used for storing ice rather than for preserving food, they gradually came to be seen as useful refrigerators for food...The increasing demand for clean, good-quality ice opened an important new market. In Europe, when a mild winter failed to produce ice, people had to look north, to Greenland and Norway...In nineteenth-century Paris and London, cooks, confectioners, butchers, fishmongers, and wine merchants all rushed to buy from ship bringing cargoes of ice form the "Greenland seas." Ice harvesting was a dangerous business...competition...soon began flooding the market..."
---Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World, Sue Shepard [Simon & Schuster:New York] 2000 (p. 280-5)
[NOTE: This book contains far more information than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian will be happy to help you obtain a copy.]

"Ice has been used to preserve food and cool beverages for thousands of years. Wealthy Europeans brought their appreciation of icy desserts and iced drinks with them to the New World. Archaeolgists at Jamestown, Virginia, found ice pits dating from as early as the seventeenth century. The colonists cut ice from ponds, lakes, and rivers during the winter and stored it in caves and underground cellars to last through the hot summer months. In the eighteenth century, icehouse, which are more efficient than cellars, provided cold storage, as well as preserving ice for chilling food and drink and making ice cream. Ice was advertised for sale in Philadelphia newspapers as early as 1784, and Europeans visiting Philadelphia and Baltimore in the 1790s reported that Americans drank water with ice and that containers of ice were used to cool hotel rooms. The first recorded cargo of ice was shipped from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1799, and between 1805 and 1860 Frederick Tudor, a Boston merchant, grew rich shipping harvested ice from Massachusetts ponds overseas. Tudor, known as the Ice King, promoted the construction and use of ice chests, sent agents to help establish businesses selling ice cream , extolled the virtues of ice for preserving food, and promoted the sale of carbonated water, which he thought tasted better cold. He even offered bar owners free ice for a year if they agreed to sell iced drinks at the same price as warm ones."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 700-1)

About the ice trade in America

• Heyday of Ice Farming/Columbia Magazine
• Frederick Tudor, the Ice King

About ice houses

• Ice Houses in Sussex (United Kingdom)
• Ice Houses in America (with pictures)
• New England Ice House History

RECOMMENDED READING:
The Frozen-Water Trade/Gavin Weightman
...details about Frederic Tudor's ice business, early 19th century

About culinary research & about copyright.
Research conducted by Lynne Olver, editor The Food Timeline. About this site.