Flaxseed Lemonade: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #7 (plus bonus limeade and modern day juiced lemonade)

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread August 24 - September 6
Create a food item that reflects historical food improvements. Showcase a new discovery in food preparation, a different way of using food, or a different way of serving it. Make sure to include your documentation!

Around the time I was thinking about what I could make (and doing real bread is out, for many reasons....gluten free family and high altitude among them), I got a juicer from a garage sale of another expat who was moving back to the states.  For a mere $2, I could try to juice something.  Naturally, I thought of doing lemonade since there are so many versions of it.  I did a little online research and juicers were invented well before the 1960s cutoff for the Historical Food Fortnightly but I wasn't able to find a juicing recipe historically documented before that date.  I do still plan to make my favorite lemonade recipe of all time which includes juicing three tart apples and one lemon. I found this blogpost when looking for a recipe.

I posted to the HFF facebook group and so many people stepped in to help find recipes!  I received a few "healthy" lemonade recipes, one of which is highlighted below.  And I have the materials to make limeade (an improvement from the 1950s) and the juicer recipe above.  But my husband decided to climb a mountain at the last minute this week and between trying to get a little work done and man the fort with our monkeys, I thought I would post what I have.  I'll come back and update this post when I get the other two batches made.  *Updates below for the other two recipes*

The Recipe: Flaxseed Lemonade, from the "Fluid and Convalescent Diet" section, Dietetics Simplified, The Use of Foods in Health + Disease, L. Jean Bogert [1940] (p. 629)
The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is English, second edition published 1940 in New York.

The book that another HFF member found for me and took the time to grab when Peru servers prevented me from seeing it.

I loved that lemonade could be considered a health food.

How Did You Make It:  Flaxseed (linaza here in Peru) is quite common and easy to procure, so that is the lemonade recipe I decided to make.  It's healthier if you grind it (by healthier, I mean easier for your body to get the nutrients) so we grind the seeds in batches and put it in the fridge and freezer.  So, I only had ground flaxseed instead of unground seeds.  I boiled it for 10 minutes because our stove is hooked up to a gas tank, similar to what you use for propane grills, and simmering is not really an option. I compromised on boiling for 10 minutes instead of simmering for 30-40.  Also, while I was preparing the lemonade, I was googling ideas for helping my husband with his altitude sickness and flaxseed came up as something that can help with altitude sickness, so I had my victim invalid all picked out.  While boiling the linaza, I handsqueezed a lemon into a glass.  The amount of juice from one lemon happened to equal 2 tablespoons, which was convenient.  I added my sugar (dipping into my stash of organic cane sugar from our trip to Colombia....if we're going for healthy lemonade, organic sugar seemed the way to go).  Then I strained the boiled flaxseed through two mesh strainers.  Flaxseed can also be used as an egg substitute and it does get pretty gelatinous.  I didn't have trouble with the flaxseed making it into the drink.  This is a hot beverage (serve immediately) and made about 8 ounces of drink (the rest of the liquid boiling off).

Time to Complete: Approximately 15-20 minutes.

Total Cost: The lemon was about 65 centimos (about 25 cents USD) and we had the sugar and flaxseed already.  I would estimate total cost under 50 cents.  This makes one serving.

How Successful Was It?: I reserved one tablespoon to taste it and gave the rest to my husband.  He drank a few sips, mostly under my watchful eye (aka shoving it in his face and telling him it was great for altitude sickness!)  Most of the mug still remains.  I might heat it up and drink it, it tastes like gelatinous lemon water, which is really what it is, but it doesn't taste bad.  It's not worth throwing away.  But I will point out that invalids and sick people through time don't always take their medicine.  (I'm looking at you, DP!)

How Accurate Is It?: I couldn't follow the simmering instructions exactly, but I think that whole flaxseeds would have produced a similar water to what I had with ground and I am guessing the end result was similar.

Time to Research: Longer than you would think with trying to research online from a country that is sometimes blocked by US servers.  But thanks to the HFF group, around 1 hour total.

Straining out the boiled ground flaxseed.  I had taken a picture of the pot, but the flash made it hard to see. Imagine water with a bunch of floating brown ground up seeds and you've got it.

My tasting tablespoon.  You can see the flaxseed did color the drink.

This is a relatively large mug, I estimate about 1 cup total of liquid.

And here are the other two lemonade recipes I made.

First up was from the 1950s.  I first found it on this blog, then a friend kindly took a picture of the recipe from his copy of the cookbook and I was able to confirm that the blog author faithfully transcribed the recipe. I made the limeade version as limes are very common here in Peru.  I would estimate the cost for this one (making a bit more than a liter) at about $1.50 USD.

Sugar, limes, apples and lemons for the two recipes.

Making the sugar syrup.  1 cup seems like a lot of sugar (1 cup sugar in 1 cup water, 1 cup lime juice, 4 additional cups water).

It looks a little brown from the type of sugar I used, it was nice and yellow-green when it was just juice and water.  It tastes ok...a bit sweet for my taste, but not bad and certainly tart from the lime juice.  I would go to my own recipe of about 6 limes per liter of water plus a little sugar to taste (probably 1/2 cup or less.)

Next up was the juicer recipe, made from this blogpost and with my new juicer.  My husband fashioned a spout out of a plastic bottle (this was why the juicer was only $2) and it worked well enough to get us there.  I would estimate the total cost for this one at about $2 USD.

The lemon, apples, and left over lime skins I added.

The final frothy drink.  Yummy, tart (maybe a bit much...I used tart apples in addition to the lemons plus adding extra lime).  No added sugar.  It only made a couple of small glasses, though, from all that fruit.

Here are the leftovers (the non-shredded limes are from the sugar syrup I made).