Soda powders can be kept on hand, and the water in which they are used can be flavored with any kind of syrup or tincture, and thus make a fine drink for hot weather.
Currant Ice Water.
Press the juice from ripe currants, strain it, and put a pound of sugar to each pint of juice. Put it into bottles, cork and seal it, and keep it in a cool, dry place. When wanted, mix it with ice water for a drink. Or put water with it, make it very sweet, and freeze it. Freezing always takes away much of the sweetness.
The juices of other acid fruits can be used in the same way.
Sarsaparilla Mead.
One pound of Spanish sarsaparilla. Boil it in four gallons of water five hours, and add enough water to have two gallons. Add sixteen pounds of sugar, and ten ounces of tartaric acid.
To make a tumbler of it, take half a wine-glass of the above, and then fill with water, and put in half a teaspoonful of soda.
Effervescing Fruit Drinks.
Very fine drinks for summer are prepared by putting strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries into good vinegar and then straining it off, and adding a new supply of fruit till enough flavor is secured, as directed in Strawberry Vinegar. Keep the vinegar bottled, and in hot weather use it thus. Dissolve half a teaspoonful or less of saleratus, or soda in a tumbler, very little water till the lumps are all out. Then fill the tumbler two-thirds full of water, and then add the fruit vinegar. If several are to drink, put the soda, or saleratus into the pitcher, and then put the fruit vinegar into each tumbler, and pour the alkali water from the pitcher into each tumbler, as each person is all ready to drink, as delay spoils it.