The final cooking aspect of last Sunday’s garden harvest involved making a lemon syrup for a Lemon Cordial drink, to be diluted with water or carbonated water 1:5 or so.
The first step, surprise surprise, was to slice and prick as many lemons as you like, and then to juice them on the electric juicer, avoiding inclusion of the white yucky pith wherever possible. Then you add to the juice approximately a ton of white sugar, some Tartaric Acid and Epsom Salts (Magnesium Sulphate). [Aside: Magnesium Sulphate is known as Epsom Salt, because the salt is mined at the springs near Epsom in Surrey]
And some other stuff, but I am only allowed to slice, juice and boil – the technical stuff such as ingredient selection and weighing is reserved for the Chartwell Ladies portfolio.
I made a technical observation that any world-class Lemon Cordial, worthy of a good reputation, should be transparent pale yellow in appearance, and not a murky mass. Therefore, I invented a straining device using a square of clean linen and 9 clothes pegs. This proved to be insufficient, as the pores in the linen cloth were inclined to block up very quickly.
Therefore, a second time, I invented the double-filtration method, in which the murky liquid is pre-sieved before entering the linen filter.
The double-filtration slowed down the overall process tremendously, but the result was most pleasing – a reasonably clear and transparent cordial. Yum.
The final yield was quite a number of litres of Lemon Cordial Concentrate, which can be diluted five times by volume to give a refreshing drink on a hot day.
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