Cooking to a Gauge on Kettle
With the first method the amount of tomato juice pumped into the kettle, or the number of bushels of tomatoes from which this juice was derived, must be measured. This is a nuisance, and is not necessary with any of the other methods except the second. Furthermore, even though every batch of pulp cooked during the season be made from a measured quantity of tomatoes or tomato juice, and cooked to the same point on the measuring stick, the pulp will not all be of the same specific gravity, because tomatoes are very watery at some seasons of the year and very firm and solid at other times. The watery tomatoes will make a thin pulp, and the firm tomatoes will make a heavier pulp.
Cooking a Definite Length of Time
Cooking for a certain length of time is not dependable because the steam pressure is not always the same, the coils do not always condense the pulp with the same efficiency, and the character of the tomatoes varies during the season. With this method it is also necessary to start with a definite quantity of tomato stock for each batch.
Determining Specific Gravity by Weight
The third method—that of determining the specific gravity by weight—is used as commonly as any of the others. The specific gravity of pulp merely means the comparison between the weight of a definite volume of the pulp and the weight of the same volume of water at the same temperature. If pulp has a specific gravity of 1.035, that means that a gallon of it is 1.035 times as heavy as a gallon of water.
The determination, as carried out in the cook room, is made with a small trip balance, a set of weights, and a copper flask which is tin lined. The weight of the empty flask is taken. Then the weight of the flask filled to the top with boiling water is taken. The difference between these two weights is the weight of water at the boiling point which the flask contains. When the boiling pulp approaches the finishing point, the flask is filled to the top with the boiling pulp. This should be done rapidly, as the pulp cools quickly, and as it cools, decreases in volume. The weight of the flask filled with pulp at the boiling point is taken. This weight, minus the weight of the empty flask, equals the weight of pulp at the boiling point which the flask contains. You now have the weight of boiling water the flask contains, and the weight of boiling pulp the flask contains. Divide the former into the latter, and the result (the quotient) is the specific gravity. For example, if the water weighs 1,000 grams, and the pulp weighs 1,035 grams, the specific gravity is 1.035. If the specific gravity of cold pulp is taken, then cold water of the same temperature must be taken as the comparison. The weight of cold pulp must not be compared with the weight of hot water, and vice versa.
Objections to Weighing Method
One of the objections to the use of this method is that there is usually a certain amount of air bubbles and foam in the boiling pulp and this causes an error, as the air takes up volume but does not weigh anything. Another objection is that the determination is often not made rapidly enough, with the result that while the flask is being filled with boiling pulp, the pulp is cooling and correspondingly decreasing in volume, and by the time the flask is full, it contains more pulp than it should, that is, instead of containing 1,000 cubic centimeters of pulp at 210 degrees F., it will contain about 1,010 cubic centimeters of pulp at 200 degrees F., or possibly lower. One reason for this delay is that the foam caused by filling the flask with boiling pulp rises in the neck of the flask, and makes it hard to judge when the flask is exactly full. The main difficulty with the method, however, is that pulp cooks do not have scientific minds, they do not appreciate the importance of doing the determination in a strictly scientific way, and the results they get are not very accurate. I have frequently checked up on pulp cooks using this method, and sometimes they were very decidedly off.