Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-03-23
What We Eat.

Gently TO go on a tour of investigation.
Although the item said that the inventor
was manufacturing eggs by wholesale,
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-
Slble about the story. 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 little plaster of
Parlsi the lining membrane of very fine
tissue paper soaked in parafine; thewhite
of gelatine or glue reduced in the proper
consistency, and the yelk of cOeoa-bHIber
and cotton-seed oil, which. il mixed in
certain proportions, would form a giob-
ule which might be cOIored by any harm
less matter and would hang suspended
in the gelatine. The problem of getting
the egg into the shell, however, he left
lor 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some cases, has almost superseded her.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 nutmegs,
sharpening shOepegs intd -ozts. sanding
sugar and initiating milk with water and
chalk. The chemistry of the present
goes away ahead of this; &c Is not salts
fled with clumsy limitations, but makes
clever subStitutiOns, and . very attract
i've table might be spread with appetite
ing viands that would not contain a 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 VIII imi-
tate almost anything so as to deceive
sight, taste and smell. The glucose, as
Is well known, is an imitation sugar,
made from eorn-starch, and is quite as
harmless, though not IS sweet, as cane
sugar. The gelatine can be made cut
OF old boots, leather scraps, pairings of
hoofs, and fragments of horns, 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 a wonderful family of vol-
attic liquors" They are formed by the
action of acids, upon alcohol and as
there are q 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
81 - 4
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 recent
invention, and 3 few months ago
an Englishman wrote to his coun-
try paper n 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 show the
enOrmity of their otiense:
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 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
n u
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 inri-
tator genius. The basis of a great deal
of the cheaper kind is either gelatine OF
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 favcrite confectionery of
very young ladies, are properly made of
gum-arabic and sugar; but riine-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. ..--.-,
It 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. It
has been driven from the market by
rrla aIcsvt al, 10 IL . L. r.
artificial maple sirup and Imitation hon
ey, the cells of the latter 6eing made Of
paraiine. Whether cane strip or glucose,
however. it does equally well for making
artificial coffee. which is<eomposed of
corn or other grain roasted in molasses
and ground "Extract, OF Coffee is q
liquid obtained from this decoction, but
as this deception has become pretty gen
emily known, other devices have been
adopted to beguile the public. aud a
patent was taken out in England some
time ago for making artificial coffee
beans. The Specifications called for
mixture of genuine coffee and -chicory
ground up together and campressed by
suitable machinery into tfie well known
shape of cofeein the grain. But it does
not always happen that an article manu-
featured undera, patent is made in ac-
cordance with the specifications of the
patent, and is more than probable that
the imitation coffee-berries contain moth
ing that ever grewpp a coffee tree.
But it is when he comeS9o fhepmanu-
facture Of the ayaEions ieuies and Tfuit-
buffers, which are fOundin every grocery
that the genius of the iiniitator displays |
itself at its best, and he makes tooth
some product out of stale and unprofita-