GINGER

The ginger plant (Zingiber officinale) belongs to the order from which turmeric and East India arrowroot are obtained. It is a native of India and China, and is cultivated in tropical America and Africa. The ginger of commerce is derived from the fleshy, creeping rootstalks, which are dug up when about a year old, and, if scraped and dried, give white or Jamaica ginger; if left coated, or unscraped, black or East India ginger. Calcutta exports the principal part of the ginger used. Ginger contains, besides the volatile oil, an aromatic resin.

African and Calcutta ground ginger is brown; that from Jamaica, Japan, etc, being from scraped roots, is white or light buff.

After being treated with alcohol in the manufacture of ginger extract, or with water for ginger ale, the residue is used to adulterate fresh materials. Rice, bran, linseed meal, cereals, and turmeric are also found as adulterants.

Massachusetts reports give the following figures with regard to ginger:

Curry is not so extensively used in America as it deserves, yet it is found so often as to justify a word.

It is composed of a mixture of spices and highly colored with turmeric. It is liable to variations of strength, as are the spices of which it is composed.

ADULTERATION OF SPICES

In ground spices, as a rule, we find much reason for dissatisfaction. Their only merit now is convenience, not quality. Nutmegs, mace, and cloves are so oily that to grind them easily some absorbent like sawdust or starch is added, and this becomes a part of the ground spice as the first step, whatever may be added later. There is, however, but little demand for ground nutmeg, American housekeepers having the good sense to prefer the whole nuts.

Twelve specimens of cinnamon were examined. Only three of these contained any cinnamon at all. Even these were mixed with cassia and sawdust. The other nine were chiefly cassia and sawdust, mahogany sawdust being distinctly identified in some of them. Two contained a very little cassia and a great deal of sawdust, and the third was nothing but sawdust, there being no trace of any spice in it.

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All these spices may be examined under the microscope for adulterations; but, as has been said before, only experience will give the training of the eye which will render an opinion worth anything. Each kind of spice here mentioned has its own peculiarities, and after these are thoroughly studied the additions may be at once determined. The adulterations are much 1 See Microscopy of Vegetable Foods. A. L. Winton and J. Moeller.

the same in all this class starch in some form, turmeric for color, mustard husks for pungency.

The following table is taken from the Massachusetts report for 1904:

Vinegar (vin aigre), as its name implies, was originally made from sour wine, that is, from wine in which the alcoholic fermentation had given place to that which produces acetic acid. The whole of the alcohol may be changed into acetic acid by means of the vinegar ferment (Mycoderma aceti), commonly called "mother of vinegar." A very little of this in the presence of air is sufficient to convert a large quantity of alcohol.

In the United States and Canada vinegar is derived chiefly from cider. The best of it is made by a long process of fermentation in casks. The casks are half filled and left, with bungholes open to allow the free circulation of air, in a warm cellar or exposed to the air. This process requires two or three years unless the change is hastened by the addition of old vinegar.

A lack of patience impels most manufacturers to resort to a quicker method, known as the "generator process, by which the cider is allowed to percolate through a filter of beech wood shavings or birch twigs saturated with old vinegar. This process requires only two or three days.

In France and Germany pure vinegar is understood to be made from wine, while in England vinegar means malt vinegar.

Proof vinegar contains about 5 per cent of acetic acid, but that sold in the shops often contains only 3 per cent, or even less.

The methods of adulteration of vinegar are (1) by dilution, (2) by mixing with cheaper sorts, (3) by the substitution of cheaper grades, with the possible addition of mineral acids, coloring matter, or spices for flavoring. Entirely artificial substitutes for vinegar are made up of distilled or spirit vinegar, that is, vinegar made from distilled whisky, brandy, or grain alcohol, colored with caramel and thickened with a jelly made from exhausted apple pomace (the refuse left after all the juice has been expressed from the apple stock by the cider mill).

Wood vinegar from pyroligneous acid, derived from wood by distillation, is sometimes flavored with acetic acid.

Simple tests of vinegar may be made by evaporating in a shallow dish. The residue from cider vinegar has the odor of baked apples and a slightly acid flavor; the odor and taste of the residue from wine vinegar are decidedly vinous.

PICKLES

Cucumbers and various other vegetables, such as onions, cauliflower, string beans, beets, and peppers, are preserved in vinegar as pickles. For the finest qualities the pure cider, wine, or malt vinegar is used. These are usually preserved without cooking. The cucumbers and other hard vegetables, having been first soaked in brine, the soft vegetables, like beans, having been soaked in water, are then treated with boiling vinegar.

In the case of pickles, a depraved taste has led to the demand for bright green pickles, and this taste has sometimes been gratified by adding copper sulphate or by boiling the pickles in copper kettles with vinegar and a little alum. The acetic acid of the vinegar acts upon the copper, forming a little acetate of copper, one of the most poisonous of all the salts of copper; and this, being absorbed by the pickles, colors them green. Cheap pickles are put up in so-called "white wine," or spirit vinegar. For the presence of copper, immerse a strip of clean, bright iron in the liquid, and if copper is present the iron will become coated with a thin film of metallic copper in a few minutes.

Olives are usually pickled before they are wholly ripe. They are soaked first in a solution of potash and lime, then in cold water, and finally preserved in a brine which may or may not be flavored with fennel, laurel leaves, coriander, or vinegar.

A queen olive is simply a large-sized fruit and not a special variety. The ripe olive is growing in favor and is said to be more digestible than the green.