IMPROVE- MENTS IN THE TREATMENT OF CERTAIN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES TO RENDER THEM MORE CONVENIENT FOR USE, AS ARTICLES OF FOOD AND FOR THEIR BETTER PRESERVATION
Year: 1851

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, GAIL
BORDEN, junior, of Galveston, Texas, in the United States of America, Manu-
facturer, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her present most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Royal Letters Patent, bearing date at Westminster, the Fifth day of September,
in the fifteenth year of Her reign, did give and grant unto me, the said
Gail Borden, niy exors, admiors, and assigns, Her especial license, full power,
sole privilege and authority, that I, the said Gail Borden, my exors, adiñors,
and assigns, and such others as I, the said Gail Borden, my exors, adñiors,
and assigns, should at any time agree with, and no others, during the con-
tinuance of the said grant, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and
vend, within that part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
called England, the Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
and in the Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, and Man, and in all
Her Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, my Invention of "IMPROVE-
MENTS IN THE TREATMENT OF CERTAIN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES TO
RENDER THEM MORE CONVENIENT FOR USE, AS ARTICLES OF FOOD AND FOR THEIR
BETTER PRESERVATION;" in which said Letters Patent is a proviso obliging
me, the said Gail Borden, by an instrument in writing under my hand
and seal, particularly to describe and ascertain the nature of the said
Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed, and to cause
the same to be enrolled in Her Majesty's High Court of Chancery within
six months from the date of the said Letters Patent.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said condition, I do hereby
declare that the nature of my Invention, and the manner in which the same
is to be performed, are particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following description thereof, that is to say :-
The nature of my Invention consists in combining flour farina, vegetable
meal, or pulverized biscuit, with the concentrated extract of the nutritious
parts of animal flesh, and in drying or baking the two substances in a drying
chamber, or in an oven, thereby forming a portable dessicated meat, bread, or
biscuit, which contains a large amount of nutriment in a very small bulk and
convenient form, well adapted for seafaring purposes, armies, emigrants,
travellers, hospitals, or family use.
I will now proceed to describe the process for the manufacture of the said
meat biscuit. I take animal flesh of any kind suitable for eating that is fat
and in good condition, and in order to extract all the nutritious juices from it, I
macerate it by heat or steam by boiling in a quantity of water until all its
nutritious or alimentary properties are given out in the decoction; I then strain
this through strainers of wire cloth as a means of filtering the extract, which
is further defecated by settling. The decoction or extract is reduced by eva-
poration until it attains a state of spissitude about the consistency of thick
treacle. This is done by means of steam in a pan or tub with a steam pipe
coiled in the bottom, or by the vacuum process, after the manner of making
clarified sugar. Previous to and during this operation all the fat or oily part
that rises to the top of the decoction is skimmed off or otherwise removed, and
does not enter into the manufactured article. With the animal extract reduced
to the consistency described, I mix good flour farina or meal, or pulverized
biscuit made of good flour or meal until a dough is formed sufficiently stiff to
be rolled into a convenient form and cut into pieces by a common cracker or
biscuit machine suitable for drying or baking. By mixing the flour or meal
with the animal extract in a hot state, the dough becomes stiffer when cold,
therefore more convenient to handle or work, and more animal extract and
nutriment will be combined with and contained in a given or specified quantity
of the flour or meal which may if preferred be kiln dried. I dessicate the
dough as heretofore described in a drying chamber or bake it in a kiln or oven
properly heated for that purpose. The heat employed may be about as great
as a common oven would be after a batch of bread had been baked in it. It
should be baked slowly and with great care until it becomes dry, about the common
biscuit or cracknell dryness. The biscuit thus made may be ground into meal for
greater convenience for cooking, and may be packed either in the cake or meal
in air-tight casks or cases, or into tight bags of gutta percha, varnished cloth, or

page_text: other material, for the purpose of keeping out air, water, or moisture. To
make soup of the biscuit, it should be ground or pulverized, then stirred into
sufficient cold water to form a thin batter, in which it may stand five to twenty
minutes, then add it to boiling water, stirring frequently during the process,
especially before it boils. The boiling should be continued from ten to thirty
minutes, according to the fineness of the biscuit meal, and until it is dissolved
in the water. Add salt and pepper and any other condiments to suit the taste,
One ounce will make a pint of nutritious soup. Cooked vegetables of various
kinds may be used in the soup. I am well aware that portable soups and
meats preserved in hermetically sealed vessels have been long known and used,
but they are to a great extent bulky, and known to be liable to deterioration. I
am also aware that gelatine obtained from young meats and cartilaginous or gristly
portions of meat has been brought into solids, but this manufacture is of little
or no value in sustaining health or life. My meat biscuit contains a large
portion of the extract of the juices of matured meat or flesh.
It is most por-
table and convenient; it answers the double purpose of preserving in the same
cake the nutritious properties of animal and farinaceous food. By the peculiar
combination of the constituent parts, the biscuit is not liable to the attacks of
weevils or other insects, to which other biscuits and most food are subject. The
biscuit is entirely free from oil or grease, and thereby less liable to deterioration.
The excellence of the meat biscuit depends upon the quantity of animal nutri-
tive matter employed in its manufacture. The extract should therefore be
reduced by the process of evaporation to about one-eleventh the weight of the
flesh (including its proportion of bone and fat.) This is the proportion wherein
fat and well-conditioned beef is used. I mix about two parts of the extract
with three parts of flour, equal to five parts, but about twenty per cent of this
in weight is lost in the baking.
The meat biscuit is useful to mariners, armies, travellers, hospitals, and to
families. It may be prepared for use in a few minutes, even in a chafing dish
over a few coals or a lamp of alcohol.
This Invention presents another great advantage, to wit, the meat biscuit can
be manufactured in the colonies and other countries where meat is abundant
and cheap. By its concentration and portability it can be exported at a com-
paratively small cost to countries where meat is both scarce and dear.
Having now explained the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner
the same is to be performed, I claim the process herein-before described of
treating animal and farinaceous substances by combining the nutritive portions
of flesh in a concentrated state with flour farina or meal, and drying or baking

page_text: them in the form of biscuits to render them more convenient for use and for
their better preservation.
In witness whereof, I, the said Gail Borden, have hereunto set my hand
and seal, this Twelfth day of November, One thousand eight hundred
and fifty one

page_text: AND BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the oath of William Henry Wylde,
the Specification aforesaid was enrolled, word for word, as above written.
And also the Specification aforesaid was stamped according to the tenor of the
Statute made for that purpose.
Enrolled the Second day of March, in the year of our Lord One thousand