Despite the drink’s unsavory beginnings, consumers caught on quickly that lemonade could be both pink and nutritious. As early as 1892, E.E. Kellogg’s Science in the Kitchen features a pink lemonade recipe calling for “a half a cup of fresh or canned strawberry, red raspberry, currant or cranberry juice” in lieu of cinnamon candies or dirty wash water; and these days there are ‘pink’ lemonades made with watermelon, strawberry, raspberry or grenadine—a sweet, tart syrup traditionally derived from pomegranates.
Still, the bulk of global-brand pink lemonade is pink in color alone, a tint derived from concentrated grape juice or extract. If the taste of pink and traditional lemonade are exactly the same, why does the former remain so popular? When my inquiries to Minute Maid and Newman’s Own went unanswered I reached out to Sally Augustin, a practicing environmental psychologist who focuses on the ways elements like shapes and colors influence our lives.
“The color of pink lemonade is relaxing,” she says. “It’s [a pink] that’s not very saturated but relatively bright. In my experience, traditional lemonade has no real color.” It seems flavor and nutrients have nothing to do with pink lemonade’s consumer longevity. In the end, people just want to feel they can unwind, and with a color that’s so calming and youthful—pink lemonade is the perfect drink with which to do so.
So today Conklin’s and Allott’s legacies live on. As for the men themselves? In reference to Allott, the New York Post put it best: “The man who invented pink lemonade has crossed the river…where it may be hoped there are no pure-food advocates to harass him for the sins committed in his name.”
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unusual-origins-pink-lemonade-180960145/#lmyKIqPzkXxJRYWq.99