Greek Refreshments (Aguas Frescas)
Mariana Kavroulaki in here blog History of Greek Food has a couple of delightful posts on the Greek cousins to Mexican aguas frescas. Cannelada is cinnamon flavoured, in fact it’s very like Mexican horchata without the rice.
Lemonade, is, well, is lemonade. It apparently goes well with watermelon pie made with sesame seeds and honey. Her recipe goes immediately onto my must-try list.
Most of these drinks, she explains, are made at home but not in restaurants. That’s a bit different from Mexico where every restaurant from the high end to the most humble and above all to the street stands offers at least one agua fresca.
Another interesting thing. In the 1950s, adding a little bicarb to lemonade to make it fizz was popular. Shades of cebadina. It suggests that when bicarb became cheap, lots of people in lots of different places had the bright idea of adding it to drinks.
Oh, no! Cebadina is back. Now I need to find out why all of a sudden sodium bicarbonate got cheaper. Thanks for this item Rachel. It just goes to show that there is nothing new under the sun.
Dear Rachel,
In the second half of the 20th century, sales of Greek carbonated drinks increased exponentially, however these drinks were still considered expensive. Baking soda was already cheap and provided a good alternative to the fizzle of fashionable bottled carbonated drinks. Well, it was largely a matter of fashion and money.
Thanks for the post!
Yes, I think sodium bicarbonate became cheap and widely available in the first third of the nineteenth century as a result of newly available cheap salt and associated industries.