# How are you supposed to drink a French Lemonade, aka Citron Pressé?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-you-supposed-to-drink-a-french-lemonade-aka-citron-presse/519104>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 27, 2009, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-you-supposed-to-drink-a-french-lemonade-aka-citron-presse/519104 "2009-11-27T06:26:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![zeno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zeno/32/15040_2.png) [@zeno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zeno)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-you-supposed-to-drink-a-french-lemonade-aka-citron-presse/519104/1 "2009-11-27T06:26:51Z")

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If you’ve never had one this is how the prepare a lemonade. The squeeze about 5 fresh lemons into a high ball glass (taking up about 2/5 of the glass), and serve it up with a carafe of chilled water and a bowl of table sugar.

Now, the way i drink it is by pouring some of the water into the glass until it is full, and adding a liberal amount of sugar. Then I drink some and add more water, drink a little more add water. As you might expect the first 15 or so drinks are very bitter.

I was wondering if there was some proper method of drinking it that I do not know about. If there is, I cannot figure it out.

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**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-you-supposed-to-drink-a-french-lemonade-aka-citron-presse/519104/2 "2009-11-27T13:44:53Z")

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> [@zeno](#):
>
> If you’ve never had one this is how the prepare a lemonade. The squeeze about 5 fresh lemons into a high ball glass (taking up about 2/5 of the glass), and serve it up with a carafe of chilled water and a bowl of table sugar.
> 
> Now, the way i drink it is by pouring some of the water into the glass until it is full, and adding a liberal amount of sugar. Then I drink some and add more water, drink a little more add water. As you might expect the first 15 or so drinks are very bitter.
> 
> I was wondering if there was some proper method of drinking it that I do not know about. If there is, I cannot figure it out.

try and remember how much sugar you normally use, or at least that is what I used to do =)

or cheat and use a [miracle fruit first](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_fruit) and chug it down plain 😃

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**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-you-supposed-to-drink-a-french-lemonade-aka-citron-presse/519104/3 "2009-11-27T14:45:52Z")

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Having observed Parisian pavement cafes in depth, I believe the correct form is to shout over to the waiter, “Hey, Pierre, what is this crap? I wanted _lemonade_! Get me a Sprite, _vite_.”