“Manufacturers of all kinds of spice mixtures. My celebrated brand of P. D. pepper is superior to any made; samples sent on application. Goods shipped to all parts of the United States. Spice mixtures a specialty.”
Out of all samples obtained at random from the miller or retail dealer, one-half to two-thirds have been found to be adulterated. Such a state of affairs is simply barbarous.
[1]. Since the words on adulterations were written, the pure food laws of the different states have been greatly enforced, which has reduced adulterating almost to an entirety; but enough yet remains to make them of value.
Cloves were prepared with the volatile oil extracted, and with the cloves there were ground clove stems, roasted shells, wheat flour, peas, and minerals. Allspice is ground with burnt shells and crackers, spent clove stems and charcoal and mineral color. Ginger, with corn flour, mustard hulls, coloring, and yellow corn meal.
Mace, with flour buckwheat, wild mace, and corn meal. Cayenne, with rice flour, stale shipstuff, yellow corn meal, tumeric, and mineral red. Cassia, with ground shells and crackers, tumeric, and minerals.
Cinnamon, with cassia, peas, starch, mustard hulls and tumeric, mineral cracker dust, burnt shells, or charcoal. Pepper, with refuse of all kinds, ground crackers, cocoanut shells, cayenne, peas, beans, yellow corn meal, buckwheat hulls, nutmegs, cereal, starch, mustard hulls, rice flour, charcoal, and pepper dust. Mustard, with tumeric for color, and cayenne to tone it up, cereal starch, peas, yellow corn meal, ginger, and gypsum.
By comparing prices in the following table of ground and whole spices, we may see to what extent adulteration is carried on. This adulteration is so largely practiced that it has given rise to a branch of the manufacturing industry of great magnitude, which has for its sole object the manufacture of articles known as “spice mixtures,” or “pepper dust,” which are known to the trade by such technical abbreviations as “P. D.” This is a venerable fraud, which has expanded with rapidity.
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