Lemonade

Lemonade, which in its simplest form is a drink made from lemon juice, sugar, and water, has a history dating back to at least 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 the English “sherbet” derives. By the mid-seventeenth century the drink was popular in Europe when limonadiers, street vendors in France, sold lemonade at modest prices. A lemonade recipe appears in the 1653 English translation of LaVarenne’s The French Cook.