Flashback Friday: Citrus Rinds

Franz Eugen Köhler,
Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen

Flashback Friday is another of the new features around these parts. Initially, I had hoped to share craft patterns from early women's magazines with you. Unfortunately, when I was doing my research, the pages were all labeled "reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission." And I thought, "the holy hell, someone took out new copyright on 100 year old magazines?" This may just be a standard thing the college or ProQuest puts on all the materials they bring to researchers, but rather than do further research on that front, I decided that I could work within fair use* and not have to worry about copyright. That means no patterns, but it does mean I will bring a bit of delightful text from women's magazines that relates to embroidery or current craft trends in some way.

"Don't Throw Away Your Orange and Lemon Rinds" from the column "A Liberal Table on Small Means" by Mrs. S. T. Rorer. This excerpt is from Ladies' Home Journal, November 1907, Vol XXIV, No 12, page 30.

Another economy is worth practicing and that is the saving of lemon and orange rinds. When you are using a lemon for lemonade it is better if the rind is taken off; you may take it off in strips or you may squeeze the juice and keep the rind in halves; clear out the inside and throw the rinds at once into cold water; bring to a boil, boil for five minutes and drain. Cover with boiling water and boil until tender. Then make a syrup from a pound of sugar and half a pint of water; bring to a boil and skim. Put in the lemon rinds and cook until transparent; then throw them on to a sieve to drain; stir the syrup until it begins to granulate and pour it over. let it harden and dry on the lemon rinds; these are better for fruitcake and mincemeat than the commercial candied lemon rind which you usually buy. 

Believe it or not, this is only a short excerpt from this article! You probably wondered how much there was to say about lemon rinds. I'm pretty sure Mrs. Rorer was paid by the word.

Photo: Johannes Pribyl 

Other articles in this issue include "Good Taste and Bad Taste in Clocks" (bad taste seems to run to over-ornamentation and small or partially obscured faces); "What Other Women Have Found Out" (your tip could earn you a crisp new dollar bill!); and "Three Things a Teacher Should Teach" (uprightness, thoroughness, and reverence).

*basically, part of the law says that you can use short excerpts of copyrighted material verbatim for purposes like criticism, reporting, teaching, and research without permission from or payment to the holder of the copyright. We are researching our collective past. One of you will write a book about it.