Like a hell-broth boil and bubble;
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.’
Mr. Accum very properly gives us a list of those miscreants who have been convicted of adulterating their porter with poisonous ingredients, and want of room alone prevents us from damning them to everlasting fame, by inserting their names along with that of the Rev. Sennacherib Terrot, in the imperishable pages of this miscellany.
Mr. Accum gives us a long dissertation on counterfeit tea, and another on spurious coffee; but as these are impositions by which we are little affected, we shall not allow them to detain us. The leaves of the sloe-thorn are substituted for the former, and roasted horse beans for the latter. These frauds, it appears, are carried to a very great extent.
We must now draw our extracts to a close; but we can assure our readers, that we have not yet introduced them to one tythe of the poisonous articles in common use, detected by Mr. Accum. We shall give the titles of a few to satisfy the curious:—Poisonous confectionary, poisonous pickles, poisonous cayenne pepper, poisonous custards, poisonous anchovy sauce, poisonous lozenges, poisonous lemon acid, poisonous mushrooms, poisonous ketchup, and poisonous soda water! Read this, and wonder how you live!
While we thus suffer under accumulated miseries brought upon us by the unprincipled avarice and cupidity of others, it is surely incumbent on us not wantonly to increase the catalogue by any negligence or follies of our own. Will it be believed, that in the cookery book, which forms the prevailing oracle of the kitchens in this part of the island, there is an express injunction to “boil greens with halfpence in order to improve their colour?”—That our puddings are frequently seasoned with laurel leaves, and our sweetmeats almost uniformly prepared in copper vessels? Why are we thus compelled to swallow a supererogatorary quantity of poison which may so easily be avoided? And why are we constantly made to run the risk of our lives by participating in custards, trifles, and blancmanges, seasoned by a most deadly poison extracted from the prunus lauro-cerasus? Verily, while our present detestable system of cookery remains, we may exclaim with the sacred historian, that there is indeed “Death in the Pot.”
A Treatise on Adulterations of Food,
AND CULINARY POISONS,