Preserving and Sweetening Food and Liquors.
Year: 1895

page_text: Date of Application, 2nd July, 1895-Accepted, 3rd Aug.,
1895
Preserving and Sweetening Food and Liquors.
I JAMES YATE JOHNSON of 47 Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the County of London,
Gertleman, do hereby declare the nature of this invention (which has been
communicated to me from abroad by Dr. F. Von Heyden, Nachfolger, of Radebeul
near Dresden in the Empire of Germany) and in what manner the same is to be
performed to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the following
statement :-
The unpleasant after-taste in beverages preserves and other food which have
been mixed with saccharine (ortho-benzo-sulphonimide), and the short time such
preparations will keep in an uncorrupted state, are causes of ever recurring
complaints.
Even the purest saccharine at 100° is not free from this after-taste while its
ferment-preventing action is not sufficiently powerful in proportion to its intense
sweetening action. It is therefore impossible to add, say, to a liquor such as beer,
a sufficient quantity of saccharine to sterilize all the germs without at the same
time imparting to the beverage a sweetness of such an intensity as to make it
altogether unfit for consumption and unsaleable, while the maximum proportion of
saccharine, which beer or ale will stand without an irremediable alteration of its
taste, will not suffice to reliably sterilize the germs and preserve the beer or the
like.
Now my foreign correspondent has discovered that far more favourable results
are obtained if amido-benzo-sulphonimide be employed in place of the ordinary
saccharine. In the first place the sweetness of amido-benzo-sulphonimide is of a
purer character than that of ortho-benzo-sulphonimide (saccharine) and secondly
the germ-killing and ferment-preventing power of the amido-benzo-sulphonimide
stands in a more favourable relation to its sweetening power, than is the case in
saccharine. The sweetening power of amido-benzo-sulphonimide is only about
half as strong as that of saccharine, whereas its sterilizing power is exactly as
great as that of the latter compound. Therefore, if it were desired to sweeten
beer for example, to the same degree as it has hitherto been sweetened with
saccharine, it would be necessary to employ double the quantity of amido-benzo-
sulphonimide, and of course the sterilizing action of such an addition would also be
twice as powerful as was that of the quantity of saccharine which it has been usual
to add hitherto. Beer or ale sweetened with amido-benzo-sulphonimide is therefore
doubly protected from the evolution of noxious germs, and, consequently, twice as
effectively preserved as
Amido-benzo-
beer edulcorated with saccharine.
sulphonimide was obtained as a laboratory preparation or product in 1886, by
W. A. Noyes and described in the American Chemical Journal volume 8 p. 172.
Noyes referred to the sweet taste of amido-benzo-sulphonimide at the time, by
stating that it had an intensely sweet taste.
My foreign correspondent has now discovered
1. That the sweet taste of amido-benzo-sulphonimide is purer than that of
saccharine, which latter is always attended with a certain accessory flavour or after
taste;
2. That amido-benzo-sulphonimide has an antiseptic action;
3. That the relation of the sweetening power to the antiseptic power, in amido-
benzo-sulphonimide, is better suited for preserving purposes than in saccharine ;
and

page_text: 4. That, consequently, amido-benzo-sulphonimide is particularly well suited to
both the edulcoration and the preservation of food and liquors.
The
In order to sweeten and preserve articles of this description, the amido-benzo-
sulphonimide is employed in either a solid condition or as a solution.
quantities to be added depend upon the nature of the substance or liquor to be
preserved and upon the degree of sweetness to be imparted to them, it being borne
in mind that the sweetening property of amido-benzo-sulphonimide is about
250 times more powerful than that of cane sugar.
Where sodium salt of amido-benzo-sulphonimide, which will more readily
dissolve in water than amido-benzo-sulphonimide itself, is employed the result will
be that the substance to which it is added will acquire a pure sweet taste, identical
with that imparted by amido-benzo-sulphonimide but that no sterilizing or
preserving effect will be obtained, inasmuch as the sodium salt of the compound
named has practically no antiseptic action. The salt crystallizes out of water in
beautiful colourless needles and is very readily soluble in water.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of the said inven-
tion and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what I
claim is :-
1. Sweetening and preserving food and liquors by the addition of amido-benzo-
sulphonimide.
2. The use of amido-benzo-sulphonimide for the double object of sweetening and
preserving food and liquors substantially as herein before described.
3. The use of amido-benzo-sulphonimide-sodium for purposes of sweetening
substantially as herein before described.
Dated this 2nd day of July 1895.
JOHNSONS & WILLCOX,
Agents.