#46 Rich Orangeade

I have had a single Seville orange sat in my fruit bowl for about a month, Saturday was nice and sunny so I thought I'd make (#46) Rich Orangeade so that I could get Greg and Joff round and we can drink nice cool drinks and perhaps have some cake. In fact, have a proper Sunday high tea. It did of course piss it down all Sunday, natch.

The Seville orange was a little manky; it had done what fruit tend to do - go bad from the bottom up, but half of it was usable! To make the orangeade there was a three step process: thinly pare the zest from a Seville orange (in my case half, plus the peel of half a lemon to make up for it) and 6 normal sweet oranges. Put the peel in a litre of cold water and bring to a bare simmer for 5 minutes - the water shouldn't boil properly because the bitter pithy flavour will be drawn out of the peel - then allow to cold. Meanwhile, do step two: boil 8 ounces of sugar with 3/4 pint of cold water for three minutes, then allow that to cool also. Step three: squeeze the juice from all the oranges, and when everything is cool, stir together. Finally add a little orange flower water (I added about 1/4 teaspoon and that was just right for me) and lemon juice - I used half a lemon. Allow to chill properly before being eaten.

Greg says:
The Orange-ade is simply Enid Blyton in a glass, if that doesn't sound too graphic. Lashings and lashings say I! Once you taste that lovely floral kick that the blossom and lemon adds to it you can see the flavour that cheap cordial manufacturers have been harking after all this time, and failing to grasp. It's lovely. Will be even better when the sun comes out. Come on . . . COME ON! 8/10


FYI: I noticed that the orangeade comes from a Victorian recipe and doesn't require fizzy water. So what make an 'ade', I wondered...according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the suffix '-ade' means: "The product of an action, and, by extension, that of any process or raw material; as in arcade, colonnade, masquerade, lemonade, marmalade, pomade." So it seems that turning any fruit into a drink makes it an 'ade'. Everyday's a school day!

#46 Rich Orangeade. 8.5/10. A delicious summertime drink - the perfumed taste and aroma of the peel, the Seville orange and the orange flower water transforms it from just sweet orange juice into something pretty special!