_Butter, Cheese, Milk, Cream, and Potatoes._
BUTTER.
Butter is not exempt from adulteration: the inferior kinds are
frequently mixed up with hogs-lard which has lost its flavour and
appearance; and not unfrequently kitchen-stuff forms a portion of the
bulk.
Good butter is hard and firm; therefore that butter which is often sold
in the shops in London, that adheres to the knife when applied to, or
stuck into it, is factitious, that is, manufactured in a machine, of
the following materials—viz. rancid fresh butter, the cheap unsaleable
Scotch butters of various hues and dyes, and a quantity of salt,
well rummaged and pomelled together. This spurious commodity is of a
white cast, and generally sold under the denomination of “Dorset.”
It should be recollected that the cheesemongers never beat the good
butters, as the beating injures the flavour; they bestow their friendly
castigations only on the worthless commodity for the purpose of
extracting a portion of its rancidity and obnoxious smell.
Butter should be bought by the taste and smell. Both fresh and salt
butter should smell sweet, and be of an equal colour throughout; if
veiny and open, it has been mixed with a staler or an inferior sort.
The quality of tub butter is ascertained by putting a knife into the
butter; and if, on drawing it out, any rancid or unpleasant smell
should attach to the knife, the butter is not good; but, perhaps, the
best criterion is to taste the butter near the sides of the tub, for
the middle is often sweet when the parts near the sides of the tub are
quite rank.
Hogs-lard is adulterated with the skimmings of the liquor in which pork
or bacon has been boiled. Lard thus adulterated has a grey colour, a
soft consistence, and a salt taste; whereas lard, when pure, is white,
granular, and rather firm in texture.
CHEESE, BACON, AND HAMS.
When annatto is dear, or of inferior quality in appearance, it is
customary with the venders of the article to adulterate it with
vermilion or red lead. This contamination has chiefly been confined
to the Gloucester cheese; and may be detected by macerating a
small quantity of the suspected article in water impregnated with
sulphuretted hydrogen, acidulated with muriatic acid; which will
immediately cause the cheese to assume a brown or black colour, if the
minutest portion of lead be present. I am informed by a respectable
dealer, that cheese, especially old Stilton cheese, is frequently
_greened_ in particular parts with verdigris, in order to assume the
appearance of age.
The best cheese is that which is of a dry compact texture, without
holes in it; of a whitish colour, and which, on being rubbed between
the finger and thumb, almost immediately becomes a soft and somewhat
greasy mass. Nor is a moist smooth coat a bad criterion of its quality.
It should also be of a moderate age; for neither very decayed, nor
decaying cheese, is wholesome; nor is that which is new, adhesive, and
ropy, when heated by the fire, of a good kind. Cheshire cheese which
crumbles and tastes bitterish has been made of bad milk. Though cheese
is generally chosen by the taste, this is by no means a criterion of
its nutritive qualities; as the flavour generally depends on the nature
of the food which the cows eat, and often on the mode of management in
the manufacture of the cheese.
In the purchase of bacon and hams, pray bear in mind, friend John, that
many more thousands of tons of those articles are sold annually in the
metropolis of this land of “_just and equal dealing_” as “fine, new
Hampshire bacon and fine Yorkshire hams,” than are received from those
counties altogether; and that though the bacon merchants are supplied
with bacon from Ireland, none sell _Irish_ bacon. The large Irish hams
are also dried and sold for “fine fresh” Yorkshire or Westmoreland
varieties, to tickle the fancy of the “Bull Family” for rarities and
expensive purchases.
MILK AND CREAM.
The usual sophistication of milk is a liberal quantity of warm water,
and to give consistence to the mixture, and correct the colour, a
composition of flour and yolks of eggs is added; but should there not
have been sufficient time for the operation, the immediate aid of the
cock or the pump is invoked. But some of the more skilfully initiated
“_artistes au lait_” dissolve the common cheese dye, annatto, which
occasions a mixture of milk and water to assume the colour, and nearly
the consistence of cream. Among some of the less expert a composition
of treacle and salt supplies the place of the annatto; but this mixture
does not combine so well as the annatto with the milk. Pure milk is of
a dull white colour, and a soft sweetish taste; adulterated milk is of
a bluish appearance and thin consistence.
Cream receives a copious addition of skimmed milk, flour, starch,
rice-powder, or arrow-root boiled together, to increase the
“milk-merchant’s” profits. But arrow-root is the substance which is
best adapted, and most employed for the purpose. The generally received
opinion that milk is adulterated with chalk and whitening is, as Mr.
Accum observes, erroneous; for neither of those ingredients could be
held in solution in the milk, and would therefore be useless to the
adulterator, as they would sink to the bottom of the pail while the
manufacturer was doling out his composition to his customers. But the
practice of putting the milk into leaden pans, or vessels made of that
metal, to occasion the milk to throw up a larger portion of cream, is
sufficiently authenticated, and deserves exposure, from the liability
of having the milk impregnated with particles of lead.
Perhaps some of my readers may be lovers of curds and whey; if so, I
recommend them to endeavour to get a sight of the calf’s maw, from
which the rennet is made before it is boiled. I have had the fortune
of being “blessed” with “the captivating sight” more than once; and in
each instance I absolutely saw the bladder moving alive with maggots.
POTATOES, FRUIT, &c.
Even the humble green-grocer exerts his ingenuity and “tact” in the art
of sophistication: to augment the weight of his “murphies,” and “make
them _tell_,” he soaks “the dear _cratures_” in water during the night
previous to their sale.
While discoursing of the little peccadilloes of the honest tradesmen
of “this land of Christianity,” I never apprehended that it was
possible to sophisticate fruit. But at the very moment I was about to
consummate my bold, and I hope it will prove, patriotic undertaking,
by affixing the important and consolatory, though little word, “FINIS,”
a new discovery presented itself to my astonished optics! Can you
believe me, John? I happened to pop in rather inopportunely, that is
to say, a-la-mode Paul Pry, on a fruit-artist, who was preparing some
stale plums for sale, and giving them all the bloom and fragrance
of having been just plucked from the tree. This recondite feat of
_fruitist_-ingenuity consists in anointing certain parts of the fruit
with gum water, and then shaking a muslin bag containing finely
powdered blue upon the prepared parts of the fruit, which are laid
uppermost upon a board, to receive the precious unction.—From the
honest tradesman whom I thus found patriotically engaged in furthering
“the trading and commercial interests of his dear native land,” I also
learned that some of the more skilful and enterprizing artists soak
plums in water, when they have become shrivelled, in order to plump
them out, and make them, as it is fashionably phrased, en-bon-point.
What an age of intellect do we live in! Could our good old Druidical
ancestors have supposed that their puny and degenerate offspring would
be endowed with the extraordinary gift of being able to rejuvenize old
worm-eaten nuts? Rare and sublime discovery! What, John, may we not
next expect? Surely, we have reached the millenium of the march of
intellect and the perfection of sophistication. But I must not keep the
reader longer in suspense.
The rejuvenization of Old Nuts! Just as I had finished writing the
above article, an old and almost forgotten friend called on me, one
who has long and scientifically been patriotically engaged, “in this
age of intellect,” in rejuvenizing old, rotten, worm-eaten walnuts and
almonds, of each last year’s growth, and giving their “externals” all
the whiteness and beauty of the lily-white hand of a “fine lady,” and
their “internals” all the plumpness and en-bon-point admired by his
“most moral majesty,” our late “gracious and beloved sovereign,” in his
“fair defects of nature.” By this scion of “the trading interests” I am
informed that old nuts of all kinds are first soaked in water in order
to plump them out, and then they are fumigated with sulphur for the
purpose of rendering the shells white and clean.