This dangerous sophistication may be detected by macerating a portion of the suspected cheese in water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, acidulated with muriatic acid; which will instantly cause the cheese to assume a brown or black colour, if the minutest portion of lead be present.
FOOTNOTES:
[103] Repository of Arts, vol. viii. No. 47, p. 262.
Counterfeit Pepper.
Black pepper is the fruit of a shrubby creeping plant, which grows wild in the East Indies, and is cultivated, with much advantage, for the sake of its berries, in Java and Malabar. The berries are gathered before they are ripe, and are dried in the sun. They become black and corrugated on the surface.
This factitious pepper-corns have of late been detected mixed with genuine pepper, is a fact sufficiently known.[104] Such an adulteration may prove, in many instances of household economy, exceedingly vexatious and prejudicial to those who ignorantly make use of the spurious article. I have examined large packages of both black and white pepper, by order of the Excise, and have found them to contain about 16 per cent. of this artificial compound. The spurious pepper is made up of oil cakes (the residue of lintseed, from which the oil has been pressed,) common clay, and a portion of Cayenne pepper, formed in a mass, and granulated by being first pressed through a sieve, and then rolled in a cask. The mode of detecting the fraud is easy. It is only necessary to throw a sample of the suspected pepper into a bowl of water; the artificial pepper-corns fall to powder, whilst the true pepper remains whole.
Ground pepper is very often sophisticated by adding to a portion of genuine pepper, a quantity of pepper dust, or the sweepings from the pepper warehouses, mixed with a little Cayenne pepper. The sweepings are known, and purchased in the market, under the name of P. D. signifying pepper dust. An inferior sort of this vile refuse, or the sweepings of P. D. is distinguished among venders by the abbreviation of D. P. D. denoting, dust (dirt) of pepper dust.
The adulteration of pepper, and the making and selling commodities in imitation of pepper, are prohibited, under a severe penalty. The following are the words of the Act:[105]