The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-03-17
What We Eat,

1
none of the commission dealers would
admit that they kept such articles for
sale, and the reporter at last asked a
chemists opinion, on the subject. The
chemist had never heard of artificial
eggs, but said there was nothing impos-
sible about the story.i He thought the
resources of chemistry could turn out a
very fair imitation of genuine egg.
| The shell might be made of paper pulp,
with the addition of a little plaster Of
paris; the lining membrane of very fine
tissue paper soaked parafine; the white
of gelatine or glue reduced in the proper
consistency, and the yelk of cocoa-butter
and cotton-seed oil, which, if mixed in
certain proportions, would form a glob-
ule which might be colored by any harm
less matter and would hang suspended
in the gelatine. The problem of getting
the egg into the shell, however, he left
for the inventor to solve. While he
doubted the story that such eggs were
now being manufactured, the chemist
thoughtit not impossible that they might
be found among the ordinary furnishings
of the ''kitchen of the future" toward
which science had already come to the
aid of nature in various ways and, in
some cases, has almost superseded her.
The genius of our fathers exhausted
itself in such vain and profitless frauds as
carving wooden hams and natnTr>rs,
sharpening shoepegs into oats, sanding
sugar and initiating milk with water and
chalk. The chemistry of the present
goes away ahead of this; it is not salts
fed with clumsy limitations, bit makes
clever substitutions, and very attract
i've table might be spread with appetiz-
ing viands that would not CONAN trace
Of the articles they represented. Give
a chemist glucose, gelatine, plaster of
paris, few vegetable oils, and his choice
of the essential others, and he will imi-
tate almost anything so IS to deceive
sight, taste and smell. The glucose, as
is well known, is an imitation sugar,
made from corn starch, and is quite as
harmless, though not as sweet, as cane
sugar. The gelatine can be made out
of old boots, leather scraps, pairings of
hoofs, and fragments ofhorns, or almost
any other animal substance. The vege-
table oils are wholesome enough, and
the others are used in very small proper
ton. This is wonderful family of vol
atile liquors. They are formed by the
action of acids upon alcohol, and as
there are great many kinds of alcohol
and great many more kinds of acids,
while the number of combinations that
can be produced is simply endless-the
variety of others is infinite. They all
have strong fiavors, and the taste and
smell of any known article can be imi-
tated in them. 1t is not probable that
counterfeit meats will ever be produced,
but most other articles of food can be
initiated. Imitation butter is too well
known to need mention. Imitation
lard, made of oil, is a recent
invention, and few months ago
an Englishman wrote to his coun-
try, paper letter furiously arraign-
ing the unprincipled proprietors of an
American creamery for flooding his home
market with cheese made from lard and
oleomargarine. He had captured one
of their confidential circulars and quoted
the following paragraph to shoS~@tbe
enormity of their offense: l.
"You will be able to Judge of what
can be done with the bluest kind of
skinned milk when treated with lard or
with oleomargarine at the rate of one
and a half pounds to the one hundred of
milk. You will be able also to compare
the quality and flavor of the lard cheese
with that made with oleomargarine
Four pounds and upward of butter were
taken from one hundred pounds of milk
before treating it with lard, and the
same as to the specimen treated with
oleomargarine." Milk is rarely initiated
out and out, though it is sometimes
thickened with calves brains, and oc-
casionally thinned with water; but ice
cream is favorite subject of the imi-
tator's genius. The basis of great deal
of the cheaper kind is either gelatine or
olive butter. which is thickened with
corn starch, sweetened with glucose and
favored with the appropriate others.
Candy is usually made of nothing worse
than glucose; but some of the baser sort
consists largely of plaster of paris and
starch, while essential others are used
for flavoring all but the finer grades.
Gum-drops, the favorite confectionery of
very ungladies, are properly made of
gum-arabic and sugar; but nine-tenths
OF those sold are made of gelatine and
glucose, and some, it is to be feared, of
actual glue, mixed with certain cheap
gums, colored with lamp black and flaw
ored with the ever-handy others.
1t is, perhaps, rot as generally known
as it should be, that genuine molasses,
the homely but toothsome cane syrup of
our childhood, is now almost extinct. 1t
has been driven from the market by
glucose sirup, which is also the basis of
artificial maple sirup and imitation hon
ey, the cells of the latter being made of
parafine. Whether cane strip or glucose,
however, it does equally well for making
artificial coffee, which is composed Of
corn or other grain roasted in molasses
and ground. Extract, of Coffee is a
liquid obtained from this decoction. bnt
as this deception has become pretty gen
orally known, other devices have been
adopted to beguile the public, and a
patent was taken out in England some
time ago for making artificial coffee
beans. The specifications called for a
mixture of genuine coffee and chicorv
ground up together and compressed by
suitable machinery into the well-known
shape of coffee in the grain, But it does
not always happen that an article manu-
featured under patent is made in ac-
cordance with the specifications of the
] patent, and it is more than probahle thot