The roots are cut into small pieces of about half-inch or three-quarter inch lengths by a turnip-cutter, or by hand, the object being to have the pieces of as uniform a size as possible. The slices are then dried in a kiln: this process wasting the chicory from 75 to 80 per cent. It is then marketable, and is usually sold to the drysalters and grocers, who roast and grind it as they do coffee. In the ground state it may be kept for years, but it soon cakes. The roasted root is emptied into iron vessels, and, after cooling, is crushed in vertical stone mills, or between iron cylinders.
The dried roots cut are roasted in this country like coffee. The loss during roasting is from 25 to 30 per cent. The roasters generally introduce into the roasting machine about 2 lbs. of lard for every cwt. of chicory. Some say this is to give the chicory a better face, others state that it renders the powder less hygrometric. Inferior kinds of chicory are alleged to be coloured with Venetian red.
Chicory is occasionally adulterated with roasted pulse (called Hambro’ powder), damaged corn, and coffee husks (“coffee flights,” as they are technically termed). We have also heard of parsnips having been roasted, ground, and mixed with chicory. Dr. Hassall gives a long list of other substances which have been found as adulterants of coffee.
Treacle is sometimes introduced into fictitious chicory, to give the caramel or saccharine odour possessed by real chicory.
Dr. Hassall says the roasted chicory root yields from 45 to 65 per cent. of soluble extractive. Its solution in water is acid, and it does not possess the peculiar bitter taste of the raw root; but the taste of the liquid is more like that of burnt sugar. The copper test shows the presence of from 10 to 13 per cent. of sugar.
SECTION III.
STRUCTURE AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION.
The following analysis represents the per-centage composition of chicory root in its different conditions:
| Raw root. | Kiln dried. | |
| Hygroscopic moisture | 77·0 | 15·0 |
| Gummy matter (like pectine) | 7·5 | 20·8 |
| Glucose, or grape sugar | 1·1 | 10·5 |
| Bitter extractive | 4·0 | 19·3 |
| Fatty matter | 0·6 | 1·9 |
| Cellulose, inuline, and woody matter | 9·0 | 29·5 |
| Ash | 0·8 | 3·0 |
| 100·0 | 100·0 |
The composition of the roasted root was as follows:
| 1st species. | 2nd species. | |
| Hygroscopic moisture | 14·5 | 12·8 |
| Gummy matter | 9·5 | 14·9 |
| Glucose | 12·2 | 10·4 |
| Matter like burnt sugar | 29·1 | 24·4 |
| Fatty matter | 2·0 | 2·2 |
| Brown or burnt woody matter | 28·4 | 28·5 |
| Ash | 4·3 | 6·8 |
| 100·0 | 100·0 |