Nowhere in the world are oysters more abundant than in America. Nowhere
are they cheaper or better. As a rule, too, we cook them well, in
various styles; but in the opinion of most epicures a cooked oyster
is an oyster spoiled. Its food value in any case, raw or cooked, is
very small, and it is chiefly as a relish that those who know how to
eat value it. But for years the public has been allowing the men who
market oysters to eliminate the very elements which give them relish
by soaking them in fresh water, which makes them bloated, blonde, and
tasteless.
The dealers declare that many consumers demand them that way; floating
makes them bigger. There are such consumers; they sacrifice quality
for quantity; they know not that usually the best oysters by far
are the small brunettes straight from the deep sea; and they further
demonstrate their gastronomic obtuseness by smothering their oysters
under several strong condiments, which in themselves would destroy
their delicate, natural Flavor.
In some of our States the government has come to the rescue of the
epicure--who is in despair at this wholesale denaturing of his favorite
delicacy--by enacting laws against the soaking of oysters because few
of the streams in which this is done are free from typhoid and other
deadly germs; but many of us do not feel sure that the health boards
(because of indolence or "graft") exercise the necessary supervision,
and therefore we deprive ourselves of the cheap luxury which Europeans
have most reason to envy us. At banquets, where everybody used to eat
oysters on the half-shell, it is noticeable how many plates the waiters
remove that have not been touched.
Having thus summed up the indictment, let us consider a few of the more
important details.
The London "Lancet" of April 22, 1911, had an editorial article on
Shell Fish and Disease in which it pointed out that while from the
nature of the case the testimony is usually of a very circumstantial
kind, "which only becomes convincing in its cumulative aspects," there
are instances on record like the outbreaks following certain banquets
in Southampton and Portsmouth which admitted of no doubt as to the
source of the disease.
Dr. H. T. Bulstrode made a comprehensive report upon enteric fever and
gastro-enteritis in England to the Local Government Board of London,
in 1906, in which he showed by means of maps how many of the mussel,
oyster, and cockle beds were exposed to contamination, his revelations
being, as the "Lancet" remarks, "decidedly disquieting." Even in cases
where the shellfish were collected from locations relatively remote
from contamination by sewage they were likely to be "brought back and
cleansed on shore much too near the mouths of sewers." England is thus
in the same predicament as the United States, but that is small comfort
for us.
In an address before the New York Academy of Sciences delivered by Dr.
George A. Soper, President of the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission and
reported in the "Times" of March 14, 1911, it was pointed out that
there are over 500 sewer outlets discharging into the rivers and harbor
of New York each day a volume of sewage that would fill the channel of
the East River from the Brooklyn Bridge to a distance of fifteen miles.
"New York gets many of its oysters from Jamaica Bay--about a million
bushels a year. The water at this section is heavily polluted, and to
this can no doubt be traced a great part of the typhoid that breaks out
in this city. The Board of Health has found that 15 per cent. of all
typhoid is due to the eating of polluted shell fish."
James L. Kellogg, professor of biology in Williams College, in his
admirable book on Shell Fish Industries[4] sums up the results of his
thorough study of this subject in a chapter on Bivalves in Relation
to Disease. It may be stated as a fact, he says, that "epidemics are
sometimes caused by eating uncooked oysters. Several times they have
been traced directly to that source. The evidence collected on that
point in this country and abroad is conclusive."
There are four reasons for objecting to the process of "floating"
oysters. The first--the danger of conveying a deadly disease--has been
sufficiently dwelt on. Let us now consider the second:
Were all oysters taken from the ocean and not near the mouths of
harbors or rivers that bear sewage, no one need ever hesitate to eat
them raw. The trouble lies in the fact that, as Professor Kellogg puts
it, "before food mollusca are marketed they are _almost invariably_
placed for a few hours in fresh water to undergo what the oystermen
term the drinking process. Oysters sold in shell as well as those that
have been shucked are usually subjected to the fresh water treatment.
To make delays and the cost of transportation as light as possible, the
localities selected for this are almost without exception in harbors or
river mouths near large markets. In very many cases such waters bear
the sewage of cities of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants."
With these facts--which have often been pointed out--before him, is
it necessary to call the reader's attention to the circumstance that
even if it had never been proved that oysters can serve as conveyers of
deadly diseases, the process of floating them--that is, _bloating them
with sewage_--must be condemned as unspeakably vile and disgusting?
What aggravates the matter is that oysters have what Professor Kellogg
calls "wonderfully efficient mechanisms for _straining dangerous
organisms out of the water_." "Several gallons of water every day pass
through the gills of every full-grown oyster or clam, and every solid
particle is removed from it and remains in the body." "It is thus
plain that even if relatively few in the water, the chances are that
a dangerous number of disease organisms will be strained out of it by
these shellfish."
Indeed, were it not for the fact that most of these disease organisms
are destroyed by the digestive fluids of oysters and those who eat
them, there would be vastly more typhoid fever than there is now from
the thirty million bushels that are sent to our markets every year from
our shore beds. The danger comes from the organisms on the gills, or on
the shell, which, in that case, it is not safe to handle.
Berlin has its _Rieselfelder_--vast meadows and gardens made fertile
with the city's sewage. This liquid sewage is subjected to such
thorough chemical treatment that ere it reaches its destination it
is perfectly harmless. When the _Rieselfelder_ were opened, the city
fathers had such confidence in their chemist that they ceremoniously
drank some of this water. It was a disgusting, though perfectly
safe thing to do. The eating of our sewage-bloated oysters is both
disgusting and unsafe.
"Cleanliness is next to godliness" is a motto which it is even more
important to apply to the inside of the body than to the outside.
After this demonstration of the dangers and the filthiness of the
process of floating oysters, it is needless to advance further
arguments. But in order to complete the rout of the "floaters"--who
have long fought so fiercely for the privilege of spoiling the American
oyster--reference must be made to the two other indictments against
them, because of the interest and importance attaching to them. One is
moral and legal; the other, gastronomic.
Dr. Wiley sums up the two in one sentence: "Not only does it (floating)
deceive the customer in regard to the size of the oyster but it
deprives the oyster of its proper taste and flavor."
Osmosis comes into play in "floating," as he further points out: "By
this process the body of the oyster affects a plumpness and largeness
which materially increases its selling qualities, as it increases
its weight and size and, therefore, the profits of the dealer. The
principle of this process depends upon the fact that when a soft
substance like an oyster, containing a mineral salt in its composition,
is brought in contact with water, a process of diffusion takes place
which is known in chemical physics as osmosis, whereby water passes
through the cell walls and enters the cells of the oyster and the
mineral substance thereof is forced out into the external water. Larger
volumes of water pass into the cells than accompany the particles of
mineral matter to the outside of the cells and the result is a swelling
of the oysters and consequent increase in the size and weight by the
addition of pure water, but at the expense of the natural salt, mostly
chloride of sodium or common salt, which the oyster contains."
Thus does science confirm and explain the epicure's perception that
oysters are denatured by being soaked in fresh water--_deprived of the
tang of the sea_, which tang to any one who knows anything about the
art of eating constitutes ninety-five per cent. of the value of an
oyster.
There are exceptions to my statement that small oysters are the best.
Some epicures prefer the large, adult Lynnhavens to the small Blue
Points; and the Lynnhavens certainly are among the finest in flavor.
But men who do prefer the naturally large oysters, or oysters that
have been _legitimately_ fattened in _salt_ water, ought to be the
first to fiercely resent the floating which is done to deceive them
as to the _real_ size of the oysters they pay for, and gives them
denatured oysters, bloated and sickened with sewage water.
Three centuries ago Massachusetts boasted oysters a foot in length, and
in Maine a shell has been found measuring three inches over a foot.
We need not worry, however, at the decreased size of our bivalves; it
makes them more tender--though, to be sure, also less nutritious. In
any case, however, the nutritive value of an oyster is so insignificant
as to be practically negligible. How ludicrously small it is, is shown
by Dr. Wiley. For one hundred pounds of shelled oysters, he says, only
about ten pounds of meat are found. In ten pounds of the meat there is
over 80 per cent. of water; so that "_the actual nourishment contained
in 100 pounds of oysters is reduced to a little over one pound!_"
Could anything more triumphantly demonstrate the comparative importance
of Flavor over nutriment in this, the most delicious of all sea foods?
Yet it is to this all-important Flavor that our dealers show such
brutal indifference, not only in the various ways pointed out in the
preceding pages but in other ways. For instance, oysters spoil even
more rapidly than fish and should therefore be kept alive to the last
possible moment before serving. Yet how lamentably seldom is this
done! It can be done not only in cities on the coast, but in those of
the interior, it being possible to keep oysters alive and in excellent
state for consumption for a week or ten days or even longer.
It would be unjust to the oystermen to accuse them of perpetrating
all their crimes against shellfish from sheer greed for extra gain.
Ignorance also comes into play. Only one opener in fifty seems to know
that the best thing by far about an oyster is the liquid in its shell.
Watch the other forty-nine and you will see them wantonly wasting this
precious, fragrant liquid, and in many cases they will serve the oyster
on the flat shell, so that you get no juice at all. Always ask for them
on the deep shell and don't be afraid, after you have transferred the
morsel to your mouth to drink the liquid from the shell. It may not
look elegant, but elegance be hanged!
Dealers who wish to get rich quick by creating an unprecedented demand
for oysters with the real tang of the sea should bear all these things
in mind and further prepare themselves by reading pages 158 to 164 of
Dr. Wiley's _Foods and their Adulteration_. Then let them remember that
honesty is the only profitable policy. The public is not in a mood to
be fooled and trifled with any longer.
In the autumn of 1912 Dr. Wiley called attention (in "Good
Housekeeping" for November) to the important fact that under present
conditions not only is it seldom safe to eat raw oysters, but that
they are particularly risky in two of the "R" months--September and
October--because of the danger of pollution due to the crowding at the
seashore, which is becoming greater and greater as the summers wear
on, many of the resorts being near beds in which oysters thus become
sewage-contaminated even before they are "floated" by dealers.
In September, 1912, the Bureau of Chemistry published its Bulletin
156 on _Sewage Polluted Oysters as a Cause of Typhoid and other
Gastro-Intestinal Disturbances_, by George W. Stiles, Jr., Chief of the
Bacteriological Laboratory. He reviews the literature on the subject,
showing how in many cases epidemics of typhoid and other diseases
were traced to the eating of raw shellfish, and then relates how,
with a detective ingenuity worthy of a Sherlock Holmes or a Burns,
seventeen cases of typhoid and eighty-three cases of gastro-enteritis
following a banquet held at Goshen, N. Y., in October, 1911, were
traced directly to eating Rockaway oysters floated at Indian Creek, and
twenty-six other cases, ten of them typhoid, were traced to the eating
of Rockaways, some of which came from the same lot furnished for the
Goshen banquet.
The Rockaway oysters thus got a "black eye," but if perhaps the worst
offenders, they are by no means the only ones. "All the oysters of
New York Bay, Narragansett Bay, and the Potomac River, the waters
near Norfolk, Va., and the mouth of the James River, the mouths of the
Connecticut and Merrimac Rivers, and other industrial streams, and the
continental border of Long Island Sound, are open to suspicion," says
Dr. Wiley, and should not be eaten raw. More and more, too, will object
to eating them cooked. Boiled filth does not appeal to the imagination.
The plain and distressing truth is that our great shell fish business,
the pride of Gastronomic America, will be ruined altogether unless
the barbarous custom of discharging the sewage matter of cities and
villages into rivers and the ocean is stopped. It seems incredible that
we, with our incalculable wealth, should be so far behind Europeans,
especially Germans, in this matter of keeping our sea food clean and
edible. The disposal of sewage matter after German methods is the most
important problem now before the American public, more important by far
than tariff questions, warships, irrigation projects and Panama canals.
Typhoid fever could be reduced to a minimum were the sewage disposed
of scientifically as it is in some German and English cities. The
startling assertion that in 1909 there were more cases of typhoid in
the United States than of plague in India was made by Dr. Allan J.
McLaughlin, of the United States Public Health Service at a meeting
in New York, December 5, 1912, of the Association of Life Insurance
Presidents. The typhoid fever rate per 100,000 is, in Berlin, only
2.9; in London it is 3.3; in Vienna, 3.8. In Boston it is 11.3; in New
York, 11.6; in Chicago, 13.7; in Philadelphia, 17.5; in Washington,
23.2; while in Milwaukee and Minneapolis it rises to 45.7 and 58.7
respectively. The annual loss to the country from these fever cases is
put at $100,000,000.
"SMOKED" HAM, BACON, AND FISH.
Some Americans have an inexplicable prejudice--which, however, is
fast disappearing--against fresh pork and against sausages, but bacon
and ham are relished universally, and it is therefore of national
importance that they should be made appetizing. But they fare as badly
as our bivalves and our fowls. Time was when a crisp slice of bacon
would give zest to a whole breakfast, but the bacon served now in
nineteen cases out of twenty has no more flavor than sawdust; it is
eaten without pleasure, and therefore burdens the stomach for hours.
Virginia ham has maintained its supremacy and there are a few packers
of other hams and bacon who uphold a high standard; but most of them
have succumbed to the temptation of curing their pork products with
cheap preservatives which denature them, making them as flavorless as
floating makes the oysters, and cold storage the poultry.
Has the reader ever spent a summer in a farmhouse and casually come
into a corner of the woodshed where smoked hams were suspended from
the rafters? If so, he will remember the appetizing fragrance which
suddenly made his mouth water and make him long for breakfast. Some
persons think they do not like smoked meats; but they almost invariably
do when they thus come across the real thing.
[Illustration: Where smoked hams were suspended from the rafters]
Smoke is not only the best of all preservatives, it is also the most
valuable of condiments, imparting to meats or fish a delicate aroma
without altering their natural flavor. A famous Austrian physiologist,
Professor Brücke, pointed out many years ago that smoked meats are more
digestible than fresh meats; but he did not give the reason, which is
that the delicate yet penetrating Flavor added by the smoke creates an
appetite and thus causes a flow of digestive juices to the stomach. The
American consumer is now usually deprived of this healthful condiment
and wholesome pleasure because those who handle pork products have
discovered that they can save much time, trouble, and money by soaking
them, as just intimated, in cheap solutions of chemicals instead of
smoking them in the old-fashioned way, carefully and _slowly_.
Farmers are busy folk and therefore naturally eager to learn ways of
lessening their labors. They consequently succumb readily on reading
an alluring advertisement like the following, clipped from a paper
published in a Western village:
"=Smoke Your Meat With a Brush=
There's a new and better way of smoking meat. You accomplish
in but a trifle of time all that you can by the tedious old
fashioned process. Your meat will be hard and firm, it will be
protected from all germs and insects and it will have a more
delicate flavor than if smoked in the old way. Use
=Brown's Condensed Smoke=
It contains all the preservative elements of the smoke,
without the rank, disagreeable elements. You simply apply it
with a brush or sponge, giving the meat one or two coats, and
the smoking is done. Price 75c."
In England, also, long famed for its deliciously flavored smoked hams
and bacon, the farmers and packers have been approached by the tempter.
"A case in point," says the "Lancet" of February 5, 1910, "is seen in
a rapid method of making hams, bacon, and certain fishes appear to be
smoked by applying to them a fluid called 'smoke essence.'"
Is it straight dealing, it asks, to call an article painted over with
smoke essence "smoked"? "We had occasion recently," this leading
medical journal continues, "to examine a specimen of smoke essence in
the laboratory, and the results of the analysis were interesting. We
found it to consist chiefly of creosote, analine dye, and a salt of
iron." Even if such a mixture is harmless "that fact does not justify
leading a consumer to suppose that a bloater, a tongue, a rasher of
bacon or ham, treated by this simple process, had been adequately cured
by the operation well known as 'smoking.' There can be no question at
all that the color is added to complete the disguise, and we feel bound
to admire the ingenuity of the inventor of a mixture who puts into it a
salt of iron which is calculated to give a side of bacon an appearance
of natural rustiness."
In conclusion, the "Lancet" expresses its regret that such matters
as these affecting the purity of the food supply were not "strongly
dealt with" when the Departmental Committee on Food Preservatives and
Coloring Matters issued its recommendations nearly a decade previously.
It is passing strange how patiently the average Englishman, and
still more the average American, allows himself to be fooled by food
manipulators whose chief aim is to save time, trouble, and expense.
The familiar definition of genius as "a capacity for taking pains"
is incorrect, but such a capacity is certainly necessary for the
production of the best foods, including bacon and ham. We Americans,
speaking collectively, lack it and that is one of the main reasons why
we must be branded as an ungastronomic nation.
A striking illustration of the importance the Bohemians, for instance,
attach to such matters is found in the village of Wallern, where a
coöperative society has been formed for the sole purpose of getting
meats smoked in the best possible manner, with beech wood.
The point I wish to call special attention to is that the pork products
in this model house are smoked, according to the size of the pieces,
for a period of _two to three months_.
In a recent _American_ book on pigs these directions are given: "If the
hams are to be smoked they should be hung in the smoke stoves _at least
three days_."
Three days! In Germany and Austria, where the world-famed Westphalian
and Prager hams are cured, six weeks is the minimum time for a good
article. The maximum, for the highest-priced hams, is three months.
We are now in a position to understand why so many Americans imagine
they do not like smoked meats. They have in mind either such meats
as have been chemically "smoked," miles away from any smoke house or
stove, or such as have been actually smoked, but too briefly, or in too
strong smoke.
Dealers have slyly taken advantage of the naturally growing aversion
to "smoked" meats. "Slightly Smoked" is a label one often sees now,
and ere long, if not checked they will have the audacity to say to a
housewife asking for smoked ham or fish or bacon that they have "none
in stock," there being "so little demand for it."
That is the way many of the best things are crowded out of the market.
In conclusion, let me whisper in the reader's ear the secret why those
who handle pork products and fish are so eager to get rid of the smoke
house that during the process of smoking the ham and bacon may lose up
to twenty per cent. of its weight.
"But why does the dealer not charge more, to make up for loss of
weight?" He does, dear Madam. He charges more every year and saves the
full weight, too, by avoiding the smoke house. The joke is on you. He
will do this as long as you meekly tolerate it. He will tell you with a
look of injured innocence that you are "the first one to complain"--and
perhaps you are, though merely one of many thousands who have been
fooled.
As I have said, there are exceptions. A few firms are selling real
smoked ham and bacon, and they are coining money. Others will perhaps
find out ere long that it pays better to please the public than to fool
it.
At present, the outlook seems hopeless. Some years ago, when there
were still a few dealers left who did not try to get rich quick at the
expense of your stomach and health, I used to lunch often on smoked
fish. But in the year 1912 you could not--at least I could not--get a
genuine smoked fish for love or money. One day in December, I walked
into a delicatessen store in which I saw through the window a plateful
of whitefish, a variety which is particularly good smoked. They were
choice specimens, but after a sniff at them I beat a retreat with,
I presume, a disgusted expression. "What's the matter with those
fish?" asked the dealer. "They are a first-class article." "Fine
fish," I retorted, "but they are not smoked." "They may not be smoked
enough...." "They are not smoked at all," I interrupted, "they are
chemically preserved and dyed to save weight." "You seem to know more
about it than I do," he said. "I certainly do," I answered: "If they
were smoked I would take a dozen of them."
Fancy the situation--to be unable, in the second largest city of the
world, to get smoked fish! I have tried dozens of places, always with
the same result. If others refused to buy the denatured stuff offered,
smoked fish would soon be in the market again.
The best foreign methods of smoking meats are described in No. 3655 of
the Daily Consular and Trade Reports (Washington, December 8, 1909).
Fortunes are in store for all American packers who will follow those
methods and advertise _honestly_:
"We give our pigs clean food, feeding a fine flavor into our hams and
bacon; we do not destroy this flavor with chemical preservatives but
intensify its appetizing qualities by the use of beechwood smoke."
Where beechwood or hickory, oak, or maple are not available, corn cobs
make a cheap and satisfactory substitute.