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.