Lemonade
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Lemonade refers to one of several beverages.
- In the U.S. and Canada it refers to an uncarbonated soft drink made of a mixture of lemon juice, sugar, and water.
- In the UK, it refers to a carbonated (fizzy) drink, sometimes lemon-flavoured, comparable to, but excluding the brands 7-Up or Sprite, which are lemon- and lime-flavoured. The combination of lemonade and beer produces a shandy.
- In France, like in UK, it refers to a carbonated drink, such as Lorina or Pschitt.
- In Germany "Limonade" or "Limo" refers to any fruit-flavored carbonated soft drink, especially orange-flavored drinks. "Orangenlimonade" refers to orange soft drinks less ambiguously, while "Silberlimo" (silver lemonade), "Zitronenlimonade," or "Sprite" (as a genericized trademark are used for lemon- and/or lime-flavored carbonated drinks. The combination of beer and this type of lemonade produces a radler.
- In Australia and New Zealand, it refers to a clear carbonated drink, always sweet but sometimes sour as well. Though some consider 7-Up and Sprite lemonades, lemonades are not considered to taste of lemon (or, for that matter, lime).
- In the Netherlands it refers to any fruit concentrate cordial that is diluted with water.
United States
An approximate recipe for U.S. lemonade is to mix equal volumes of lemon juice and sugar and add water to taste, approximately four times as much water as lemon juice. About three quarters the volume of sugar is likely to be better to the taste of most people.
A pink lemonade variation can be produced by adding red food coloring or grenadine syrup. Traditionally, beet juice provided the pink color; so little is needed that the flavor of the drink remains largely unchanged. This beverage may have originated as a replacement for "Indian lemonade," a cold infusion of red sumac berries, sometimes sweetened with maple sugar. It has a taste and appearance similar to pink lemonade, and was popular with Native Americans and early European settlers.
While mint, borage, lavender, and even alcohol can be added to lemonade without changing its name in American parlance, the term is more specific in the U.S. than in some of the countries listed above. Substituting limes or oranges for lemons produces limeade or orangeade, respectively. Substituting tea for the water gives sweet tea, the Southern variant of iced tea.
There are currently four kinds of lemonade Snapple flavors.
United Kingdom
In Britain in the 1970s lemonade was not considered a glamorous product. This was deliberately parodied in a television commercial for R. White's lemonade, in which a man sneaks downstairs in his pajamas singing "I'm a secret lemonade drinker — I'm trying to give it up but it's one of those nights." When his wife catches him at the refrigerator he sheepishly offers her a glass. The commercial was a huge success and ran for almost a decade, although later attempts to revive the campaign were less successful.