The jury report before adverted to, points out how cheap and economical these preserved meats really are, from the circumstance, that all that is eatable is so well brought into use. It is affirmed by the manufacturers, that meat in this form supplies troops and ships with a cheaper animal diet than salt provisions, by avoiding the expense of casks, leakage, brine, bone, shrinkage, stowage, &c., which are all heavy items, and entail great waste and expenditure; and by a canister of the former being so much smaller than a cask of the latter, in the event of one bad piece of meat tainting the whole contents. The contents of all the cases, when opened, are found to have lost much of the freshness in taste and flavour peculiar to newly-killed meat; they are always soft, and eat as if overdone. As a matter of choice, therefore, few or no persons would prefer meat in this state to the ordinary unpacked and recently-cooked state. But the important fact to bear in mind is, that the nutritious principles are preserved; as nutriment, they are unexceptionable, and they are often pleasantly seasoned and flavoured.
In the ordinary processes of preparation, as carried on in London and other places, the tin canisters have a minute hole, through which the air may be expelled, while the meat is simmering or boiling within; and in the case of poultry being preserved whole, extra precautions are necessary, to insure the expulsion of the air from the hollow bones of the birds. Soups are more easily prepared than solid meat, on account of the greater facility for getting rid of the confined air. The minute air-hole in the canister is soldered down when the process is completed.
M. Alexis Soyer, who has a notoriety in London as the prince of cooks, and a very ingenious man—a sort of Paxton of the kitchen—wrote to the daily journals, about the time of the disclosure at Gosport, to offer a few suggestions. He said: 'No canister ought to contain more than about six pounds of meat, the same to be very slightly seasoned with bay-salt, pepper, and aromatic herbs in powder, such as bay-thyme and bay-leaf, a small quantity of which would not be objectionable even for invalids. No jelly should be added to the meat; the meat, and the meat alone, should produce its own jelly. With the bones and trimmings of the above, a good stock should be made without vegetables, well reduced and skimmed, to form a very strong transparent demi-glaze; six-pound canisters should be filled with the same, bearing a special mark, and one of these allowed to every dozen of the others. This demi-glaze, when diluted in water, would make six gallons of very good broth, with which any kind of soup could be made in a very short time.' He also points out how the condition of the preserved meat may be guessed by the external appearance of the canister. If either the top or bottom of the canister be convex, like the upper surface of a watch-glass, the contents are in a state of decomposition; the bulging being occasioned by the gases generated during the chemical changes. If the contents of the canister be sound, the top and bottom will be either quite flat, or slightly concave.
The Jury on Food, at the Great Exhibition, had quite an embarras des richesses; they were surrounded by hundreds of canisters of preserved provisions, all of which they were invited to open and taste. They say, or their reporter says, that the merits of the contributions 'were tested by a selection from each; the cases were opened in the presence of the jury, and tasted by themselves, and, where advisable, by associates. The majority are of English manufacture, especially the more substantial viands; France and Germany exhibiting chiefly made-dishes, game, and delicacies—of meat, fish, soups, and vegetables.' It is an important fact for our colonies, that viands of this description are as well prepared in Australia, Van Diemen's Land, Canada, and the Cape of Good Hope, as in the mother-country. 'Animal food is most abundant and cheap in some of those colonies. In Australia, especially, during seasons of drought, it is wasted in extraordinary quantities; flocks are slaughtered for the tallow alone, and herds, for their bones and hides. Were the meat on these occasions preserved, it cannot be doubted that it could be imported into England, and sold at a cheaper rate than fresh meat in our metropolitan markets, to the great benefit of the lower-classes.' This is a statement well worth being borne in mind by some of those who are at present dazzled with gold-digging wonders.
In respect to the preserved meats at the Great Exhibition, many were merely cured or dried meats. From Canada, for instance, they comprised hams, bacon, tongues, and barrels of beef and pork. Among the miscellaneous contributions were grated beef, canisters of fresh salmon, 'admirable boiled mutton in tin cases,' dried mullets, 'mouton rôti,' fish, meats preserved in a fresh state by simple drying—on a plan practised in Switzerland—and preserved larks. Not the least remarkable was a preserved pig, which reclined in all its glory on the floor of the south-west gallery, and was a successful example of curing on a large scale. Still more striking than this, was the large partridge-pie, placed somewhat out of general notice in the 'Netherlands' department; a formidable pie it truly was, for it contained 150 partridges, with truffles, and weighed 250 pounds: it had been made a year before it was forwarded to London. But among the contributions more immediately relating to our present subject, may be mentioned those of Mr Gamble, which comprised, among others, a canister of preserved boiled mutton, which had been prepared for the arctic expedition in 1824; many such canisters were landed at Fury Beach in Prince Regent's Inlet; they were found by Sir John Ross at that spot in 1833 in a perfect state, and again by Sir James Ross in 1849, the meat being as sweet and wholesome as when prepared a quarter of a century before.
The range of these preserving processes is singularly wide and varied. If we take the trade-list of one of the manufacturers, such as that of Messrs Hogarth of Aberdeen, and glance through it, we shall find ample evidence of this. There are nearly twenty kinds of soups selling at about 2s. per quart-canister. There is the concentrated essence of beef, much more expensive, because containing the nutriment of so much more meat; and there are, for invalids, concentrated broths of intermediate price. There are about a dozen kinds of fish, some fresh and some dried. There are various kinds of poultry, roast and boiled; hare, roast and jugged; and venison, hashed and minced. There are beef, veal, and mutton, all dressed in various ways, and some having the requisite vegetables canistered with them, at prices varying from l0d. to 15d. per pound. There are tongues, hams, bacon, kidneys, tripe, and marrow; and there are cream, milk, and marmalade. Lastly, there are such vegetables as peas, beans, carrots, turnips, cabbage, and beet, at 6d. to 1s. per pound-canister. The canisters for all these various provisions contain from one pound to six pounds each. It was Messrs Hogarth, we believe, who supplied the preserved meats and vegetables to the arctic ships under Sir E. Belcher which sailed in the spring of 1852.
M. Brocchière, a French manufacturer, has lately extended these economical processes so far, as to attempt to produce concentrated food from the blood of cattle. He dries up the liquid or serous portions of the blood, and forms into a cake, with admixture of other substances, the coagulable portion, which contains fibrin, the source of flesh and muscle. Unless a more delicate name could be given to this preparation, prejudice would have some influence in depriving it of the chance of fair play. The dry blood is in some cases combined with a small portion of flour, and made into light dry masses, like loaves or cakes, to be used as the basis of soups; while in other cases it is combined with sugar, to make sweet biscuits and bon-bons. Another kind of preserved animal fluid is the ozmazome, prepared by Messrs Warriner and Soyer. This consists of the nutritious matter or juice of meat, set free during the operation of boiling down fat for tallow in Australia; it is afterwards concentrated, and preserved in the form of sausages. A great amount of nutriment is thus obtained in a portable form; when boiled with gelatine, it forms a palatable diet, and it is also used to form a gravy for meat.
Masson's method of preserving vegetables seems to be very effective, as applied to white and red cabbages, turnips, Brussels sprouts, and such like. The process, as conducted in France, is very simple. The vegetables are dried at a certain temperature (104 to 118 degrees Fahrenheit), sufficient to expel the moisture without imparting a burnt taste; and in this operation they lose nearly seven-eighths of their original weight. The vegetables are then pressed forcibly into the form of cakes, and are kept in tinfoil till required for use. These vegetables require, when about to be eaten, rather more boiling than those in the ordinary state. Some of the French ships of war are supplied with them, much to the satisfaction of the crews. Dr Lindley has stated, on the authority of a distinguished officer in the antarctic expedition under Sir James Ross, that although all the preserved meats used on that occasion were excellent, and there was not the slightest ground for any complaint of their quality, the crew became tired of the meat, but never of the vegetables. 'This should shew us,' says Dr Lindley, 'that it is not sufficient to supply ships' crews with preserved meats, but that they should be supplied with vegetables also, the means of doing which is now afforded.' Generally speaking, the flavour of preserved vegetables, whether prepared on Masson's or on any other process, is fresher than that of the meats—especially in the case of those which abound in the saccharine principle, as beet, carrot, turnips, &c. The more farinaceous vegetables, such as green peas, do not preserve so well.
One of the most remarkable, and perhaps valuable recent introductions, in respect to preserved food, is the American meat—biscuit, prepared by Mr Borden. A biscuit-beef is prepared by a Frenchman, M. Du Liscoet, resembling an ordinary coarse ship-biscuit; but this is said to have 'an animal, salt, and not very agreeable taste.' The American meat-biscuit, however, is prepared in a way which renders its qualities easily intelligible. It contains in a concentrated form all the nutriment of meat, combined with flour. The best wheaten flour is employed, with the nutriment of the best beef, and the result is presented for use as food in the form of a dry, inodorous, flat, brittle cake, which will keep when dry for an unlimited period. When required for use, it is dissolved in hot water, boiled, and seasoned at pleasure, forming a soup about the consistence of sago. One pound of the biscuit contains the nutritive matter—fat excepted—of five pounds of prime beef, mixed with half a pound of wheaten flour. One ounce of the biscuit, grated and boiled in a pint of water, suffices to form the soup. It can also be used in puddings and sauces. The manufacture of the meat-biscuit is located at Galveston, in Texas, which abounds in excellent cattle at a very low price. It is said that the meat-biscuit is not liable to heating or moulding, like corn and flour, nor subject to be attacked by insects. The meat-biscuit was largely used by the United States' army during the Mexican campaign; the nutriment of 500 pounds of beef, with 70 pounds of flour, was packed in a twenty-two-gallon cask.
Dr Lindley, as one of the jurors for the Great Exhibition, and as a lecturer on the subject at the Society of Arts, commends the meat-biscuit in the very highest terms. 'I think I am justified in looking upon it,' he says, 'as one of the most important substances which this Exhibition has brought to our knowledge. When we consider that by this method, in such places as Buenos Ayres, animals which are there of little or no value, instead of being destroyed, as they often are, for their bones, may be boiled down and mixed with the flour which all such countries produce, and so converted into a substance of such durability that it may be preserved with the greatest ease, and sent to distant countries; it seems as if a new means of subsistence was actually offered to us. Take the Argentine Republic, take Australia, and consider what they do with their meat there in times of drought, when they cannot get rid of it while it is fresh; they may boil it down, and mix the essence with flour—and we know they have the finest in the world—and so prepare a substance that can be preserved for times when food is not so plentiful, or sent to countries where it is always more difficult to procure food. Is not this a very great gain?' A pertinent question, which intelligent emigrants would do well to bear in mind.