# A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.
THE OLIVE OIL.
The quantity of oil in the olive berry, says Du Breuil, keeps increasing until the very last moment it is picked from the tree.
According to this theory, instead of gathering the olive in November or December, when it is already ripe, a larger quantity of oil can be extracted from it by waiting until February or March.
It should however be understood that the early gathering of the berry gives a better quality of oil, so that it is only where quantity is more desired than quality that the picking of the crop is delayed; but if the finest quality of oil is aimed at, then the gathering should take place either in November or December, so soon as the berries are ripe. After having picked those that have fallen naturally to the ground, the others are detached from the tree either by hand or by knocking the branches with long poles. They are then carried to the barn, where they can be crushed and pressed at once if desired, though most generally they are spread in thin couches and turned over with a wooden shovel, once a day for a week or so, in order to keep them from moulding; after which ​they can be crushed without further delay, or be placed in sacks in which they can either be kept for a while longer, or be shipped to an oil manufacturer if the grower has not secured the simple appliances required for making the oil himself.
I have made two plain sketches of a press and a crushing stone, which will be found annexed to this work. They are far from being as perfect as they might be, but I never was very proficient in the art of sketching, and mean by them only to give a general idea of the simplicity and cheapness of the machinery and appliances with which I have seen oil made in the old country. Steam power is used in most of the large oil-mills of Europe, but farmers with a few hundred or even a few thousand trees can understand by my sketches the kind of apparatus they need, and the facility with which they can take care of their own crops.
The first one of those two sketches shows the kind of rolling stone employed in crushing the berries. Set in motion by a horse, it revolves in a circular trough in masonry, or wood, in which the olive berries are thrown, discarding those that may have fermented; a thick paste is thus obtained, which is placed in straw bags of a circular shape, open at the top, which are then piled up from eight to ten at a time under a press in the style of the one represented by the second sketch.
The first pressing, made slowly and gently, ​gives what is generally known as Virgin Oil. The bags are then removed from under the press, the paste is stirred up, boiling water is added, and a second pressure, harder than the first one, gives the oil that is most generally sold under the name of Virgin Oil, and which is still of a very good quality. The oil floating in the receptacle above the water is skimmed off with a large concave sheet of copper or tin.
The same paste, to which the fermented olives are added, with plenty of boiling water, is pressed once more, as hard as possible this time, and an oil of an inferior quality is obtained, which is used mostly in the manufacture of soap, of broadcloth, for lighting or lubricating purposes, etc.
This last operation is generally performed with a different press than that used in the two first pressures, so as to prevent this lower grade of oil from communicating a bad flavor to the better qualities. It is also considered highly essential in the extraction of the better grades to employ only apparatus of perfect cleanliness, and receptacles that are not used in the preparation of the oils of inferior quality.
When all the pressing is over, the paste left to dry is then cut in pieces and is used for fuel, for manuring, as also for food for horses, cows and other farm animals who are fond of it, and who fatten rapidly when fed with it.
The oil, placed in tin tanks, will deposit its impurities by natural rest within a month or so, ​when it can be drawn off into other cans or packages for the trade.
But, this mode of refining by natural process can be hastened by filtering in cylindrical tin vessels, with cotton batting at the bottom, in which case it can be bottled and sold immediately after. It has then, when just made, a freshness and delicacy of flavor which does not exist to an equal degree in the older product, which gains only a finer color by time.
Decandolle estimates the quantity of oil produced by the olive, at fifty per cent of its weight. Sieuve says that one hundred pounds of olive berries will give about thirty-two pounds of oil, while other writers give an average proportion of product of twenty-five per cent.
It is, however, proper to state that this proportion varies, naturally, according to the variety of the olive. Some of an inferior quality are known to give as little as fifteen, and even ten per cent. On the other hand, it will vary according to the early or late picking of the crop, for, as I have already said: if you wish quality, pick early; if you wish quantity, pick late.
USES OF THE OIL.
The Scriptural books teach us how the olive oil was considered as a symbol of the divine grace, and, consequently, the important place it occupied in the religious ceremonies of the ​Hebrews. A person anointed was considered as sacred. Oil signified unction itself, and he that had received it was consecrated king, priest or prophet.
The use of the oil in the Roman Catholic Church is too well known to need special comment. The Christian nations kept up the same traditions, which, from Saul to Charles the Tenth, of France, have hardly known any interruption. It is thus that we find the oil in the sacred lamps of churches, in the administration of Sacraments, for baptism, confirmation, extreme unction for the ordinations and religious dedications. In short, the Roman Catholic begins and ends life with an unction of the holy oil.
In the life of the ancients, a friction with perfumed oil was a hygienic practice followed quite generally. The athletes were rubbed with oil before appearing in the arena, so as to give more suppleness and vigor to their bodies, and this salutary usage began to be gradually abandoned only when the admiration for physical force ceased to enjoy favor among the people.
Bertile says that the elasticity and vigor that were found among the Grecians and Romans, were due, undoubtedly, to the use of olive oil, which was so popular among them. While animal fat is injurious to the stomach, and thins the blood, olive oll helps the digestion, enables the body to develop more suppleness, and helps the brain to attain the highest possible stage of human ​intellect. The salutary effects of olive oil over the human system have never been disputed.
The oil was also, and is yet, the basis of many perfumed preparations, and, as ladies of fashion and buxom dandies helong to all ages and to all countries, the use made of olive oil in that direction is not of an uncommon importance.
The fatty oils of low grades, either in their crude state or admixed with different preparations, are used also in considerable amount in soap-making, in lubricating, in lighting, in dyeing, in the manufacture of broadcloth, and they enter in the composition of many ointments and liniments.
It seems unnecessary to dwell on the great importance of the olive oil for table use. In the culinary point of view, it was of the very first necessity among the ancients, where oil cooking was predominant, and where it entered into all the seasonings most generally employed. This practice has happily been transmitted to us, and the use that is made of it nowadays in culinary preparations, sauces, salads, etc., is sufficiently demonstrated by its immense annual production, in which Italy alone figures for about 92,000,000 gallons.
In Spain, where olive oil is the principal seasoning in culinary preparations, enormous quantities are consumed. Italy and Portugal use also a great deal of it in their cooking.
But it is especially in the south of France that oil cooking predominates. The inhabitants of | ​those regions have but little love for butter and entertain a very moderate esteem for the culinary art of northern people. Let him that has not traveled in those favored sections and tasted their delicious cooking throw me the first stone! I was born there; from my early infancy I was fed on that most excellent and nutritious kind of cooking; I have kept it up through most of my life and feel happy to transmit it to my children who like it as much as I do. How often we permit ourselves to enjoy an innocent and pleasant joke towards the guests who sit occasionally at our modest table. I order for instance an omelet cooked with oil in place of butter. I keep this from my guest; I watch his countenance; he tastes it; "by Jove!" exclaims he, "what a fine omelet!" and I reply with an insinuating smile: "Oil cooking my friend!"
It was to supply the place of good oil, whose production was beginning to fall behind the consumption that the use of butter was introduced and became more and more general as the adulterations of the oil became more and more frequent. It is thus that those sophistications gained many proselytes to the cause of butter; but let us produce a strictly pure olive oil in California, where we have to help us to it a most exceptional soil and climate, we will gain back many followers to the old cause, and, in view of the enormous demand we have to meet in the United States alone, which will keep increasing ​all the time, and for which we have a protective customs duty of 25 per cent ad valorem on the foreign article, many generations will pass before we will find it necessary to compete in other countries with the European oil, whose production of the pure article, as already said, is not up to the actual consumption of the whole world, and which fact accounts for its many adulterations with cotton, sesame, poppy, cocoanut, lard oil, etc., when it is not something worse.