Mindy Segal's Go-To Dessert
Your One-Stop Shop for Summer Grilling
Vegetarians at Barbecues
True Greek Austerity: Assyrtiko
50 Years of Food Marketing
Trashy, Tacky Cocktail Pouches
Pink lemonade is a rose-tinted beverage made from lemon juice, sugar, water, and some sort of red or pink dye (natural or artificial) for coloring. Natural food colorings typically used include cranberry juice, grenadine, and crushed strawberries.
Real pink lemons, called variegated pink-fleshed Eureka lemons, do exist. But pink lemonade usually isn’t made with their juice.
The pink drink first appeared in the United States around the mid-1800s, though its origins and inventor are sometimes disputed. In one story, red cinnamon hearts accidentally were added to a batch of lemonade at a carnival concession. But according to carnival historian Joe Nickell in his 2005 book Secrets of the Sideshows, a man named Pete Conklin who ran a circus lemonade and peanut concession actually was the one who invented the drink. One day in 1857, while Conklin was making regular lemonade, he ran out of water. In desperation, he used the pink water from a tub that one of the bareback riders had used to wash her red tights. Unfazed, Conklin added some lemon slices and sold the concoction as “strawberry lemonade,” promptly doubling his sales. And, as they say, when life gives you lemons ….
Neither berries, tights, nor grapefruit explain what pink lemonade is. Pink lemonade has a distinct flavor and I wanna know what it is, daggumit!
I can't believe anyone ever believed that 'tights' story : D
I'm not sure where this story originated, but "pink lemonade" is Grapefruit juice sweetened with sugar.
NO ONE wanted to drink the sour fruit juice, so they gave it a cute name at local fairs in the south back in the 1800's.
lol...I almost laughed myself into a fit thinking about how those people would have felt had they known they were drinking lemonade made with dirty dye tinged water
An old-timer here in Vermont told me they used to make pink “lemonade” from sumac berries.
i've seen it colored with pink grapefruit too......
When I was little, my mother used to make pink lemonade from frozen lemonade concentrate and the juice that came in maraschino cherries.
I've purchased pink lemonade at Mount Vernon where they are sticklers for being authentic to how the plantation ran in the George and Martha Washington era. This was lemonade made pink by the addition of raspberry juice, something that I make at home today from the lemons and berries that I grow.
So, your dates are off by at least 100 years.
i can't wait to share the news with my know-it-all friend. i bet she doesn't know this!
Interesting. I'm glad its no longer made from laundry water. Yuck.