In his 1921 memoir, “The Circus Way,” lion tamer George Conklin recounted a time when his brother Pete was selling lemonade with a traveling circus and the concession stand ran out of water.
With few springs or wells nearby, a desperate Pete sneaked into a changing tent and stole a pail of rose-colored water from which bareback rider Fanny Jamieson had just squeezed her pink tights. Pete mixed the new, but dirty, water with tartaric acid and lemon pieces and sold it as strawberry lemonade, to great success. And thus, in 1857, pink lemonade was born. Or was it not?
A competing article credits Henry E. Allott with inventing pink lemonade. At age 15, he left home to run a concession stand for another traveling circus. According to Allott’s obituary in The New York Times, one day he accidentally dropped a red cinnamon candy into his merchandise, but it still sold. Even then, pink proved to be a compelling marketing strategy.
If these rosy tales seem exaggerated, that’s because they are. “These are great stories, but I don’t think they should be taken literally.” “It was a huge hit,” said Betsy Golden Kerem, a circus historian and board member of the Circus Historical Society.
She calls it “cutting the jackpot.” In circus tradition, the telling and swapping of war stories is meant to build not only a sense of community but also a world of characters. After all, the circus is a show, and pink lemonade is one of its liveliest props.
An extraordinary yet artificial circus kid.
Kerem, author of the forthcoming Jumping Through Hoops (Feminist Press, 2025), which focuses on women and gender performance in the 19th-century circus, sees Pink Lemonade as “a kind of cultural shorthand for the circus,” its whimsical, cotton-candy color signaling your entry into a world of spectacle that combines the extraordinary and the artificial.
The problem is, pink lemonade almost never contained real lemon juice: Aside from a few slices (used repeatedly to create the illusion of freshness), lemon didn’t play a major role in the original recipe because it was too expensive, Kerem says.
Instead, acids were used, and the acid of choice for circus concession stand owners was tartaric acid. (Today, citric acid is commonly found in fountain and bottled products like Minute Maid and Tropicana, and powdered mixes like Country Time, Kool-Aid, and Crystal Light; that’s why it tastes like it.)
In 1807, an advertisement in The Bath Journal touted one of the first artificial lemonade mixes, “Albin’s Patent Sweet Acid,” which it promised would give “a flavor as rich as the finest fresh fruit.” No lemon was needed: just two tablespoons (“as much as you like”) were mixed into half a pint of water.
Unfortunately, the deadly white powder was sometimes mistaken for tartaric acid and sold. In 1889, after 50 people were reportedly poisoned at a picnic in Woodstock, Ontario, where lemonade laced with lead acetate was served, the Brooklyn Times Union warned of a boycott of “acid-adjusted” lemonade.
There are plenty of ways to dye your lemonade pink without poisoning your guests. Many home brewers today add a splash of grape juice to the glass to bring out both color and flavor. (Tartaric acid is found naturally in grapes.) Cranberry juice also works, since pink is nothing more than a lack of red. For a psychedelic hot pink, try adding a splash of beet juice, as southern cooking blogger Monique Kilgore of Divas Can Cook wisely suggests.
If it’s summer where you live, the most time-consuming but most delicious way to make pink lemonade is with a juicy ruby rose syrup made from your favorite seasonal fruits and berries: rhubarb for baby pink, raspberry for royal pink, strawberry for sunset pink, and cherry for vermilion pink.
You can mix the syrup into a pitcher of lemon juice and water, or pour the syrup into a sugar bowl and pour the lemonade into individual glasses. This recipe creates a hydrating drink that’s mostly fruit flavored: fresh lemons and tart lemon juice, just enough sugar to balance the citrus flavor, and a pinch of salt to give it brightness without being heavy, and hydration without being cloyingly sweet.
If you don’t have a penchant for (or the patience for) fresh fruit syrup, try mixing a bit of citric acid into a pitcher of regular lemonade, as my friend and author Allison Robicelli knows, it’s not just the color that makes the lemonade pink.
