The History of Lemonade

This all-American classic may have originated in medieval Egypt. The first written reference to what we know as today's lemonade was approximately 1000 BC in accounts of life in medieval Egypt. By the 1100s, trade in lemon juice in that region was quite large, and by the thirteenth century, bottles of lemon juice with lots of sugar, called qatarmizat, were both consumed locally and exported.

One hundred years before the American Revolution, the precursor to the lemonade stand was formed when a company called Compagnie de Limonadiers in Paris was granted monopoly rights to sell lemonade, which vendors carried in tanks on their backs and served in cups -- making lemonade one of the first commercial soft drinks.