Understanding the Victorian Kitchen: Victorian Food Preservation, Safety, and Scandals

Before 1900, commercial food processing was very much in its infancy. Today's abundance of commercially prepared foods simply did not exist throughout much of Victorian times. If the harvest bounty was to be preserved, you did it yourself.

When the Ladies of the Vic­tor­ian household were not cooking and cleaning up after today's meals, they stayed busy preserving food for tomorrow's.

Home canning, jam and jelly-making; and drying, salting, and curing food were major seasonal occupations.

Without these efforts, the Vic­tor­ian wintertime diet would be bleak indeed.

In many rural areas, the preservation of fresh meats and vegetables in season was not merely a matter of winter convenience; it was often necessary for survival.

Food Preservation

The second half of the Victorian period saw the rapid development of the American food industry.

Commercial food preservation was given a giant leg up during the Amer­ican Civil War (1861-1865) by the need to feed some of the largest land armies ever fielded up to that time by a Western nation.^[1]

Both sides of the conflict did their best to provide their armies with as much fresh food as they could.

Large herds of cattle often accompanied moving armies to provide fresh meat. Vegetables and fruits, however, were more troublesome.

The historical means of supplying fresh produce, foraging over the local countryside, was effective only in season, and even then could not possibly supply field armies that sometimes numbered over 150,00 men, especially in an area like Northern Virginia that had been fought over so many times that there was nothing left to forage.

Preserved foods could travel with an army, but getting enough preserved food was a major logistical problem.

Tra­ditional preservation methods were hard-pressed to keep up with the enormous wartime demand.

The basic army ration of coffee, hardtack, and bacon, salt pork, or salt beef kept the armies alive but did not keep them healthy.

It was not unusual early in the war for half of a field army to be afflicted with some malady or another, often caused by the poor diet — a number so high that had it occurred later in the war, once the armies better understood nutrition and sanitation, an immediate investigation would have been ordered.

Still, even late in the war, nutritional deficiency diseases and digestive disorders often debilitated the army. For every soldier who died of battle wounds, two died of diet deficiencies and disease.

The Union army's Quartermaster General, Mont­gomery C. Meigs, was eager to embrace any new technology that would ease the nearly overwhelming challenge of feeding his soldiers.

As a result, preserved foods over the course of the war became an increasing part of Army rations, and the fledgling national food industry had grown to many times its pre-war size by the end of the conflict.

"Desecrated" Vegetables

The Civil War saw the beginning of food dehydration on an industrial scale.

The process was invented by a French company, Peyrusset, Moller & Co., of Paris. It introduced the process to the English-speaking world at the 1851 meeting of the Horticultural Society in London, exhibiting, according to newspaper accounts, "various dried vegetables such as peas, haricot beans, Brussels sprouts, carrots, [and] turnips."

The U.S. Army purchased dried vegetables as early as 1857 to feed soldiers in isolated Western outposts without access to fresh produce, but its purchases accelerated exponentially with the outbreak of the war.

Dehydrated or "desicated" vegetables found a place in Union Army field messes but not always a welcome one.

Compounded of a mixture of potatoes, cabbage, turnips, carrots, parsnips, beets, tomatoes, onions, peas, beans, lentils, and celery, the vegetables were shredded, blended, pressed to drive out most of the water, then baked at a low temperature to get rid of the rest.

The unappetizing result was then compressed into blocks or sheets.

The food industry ramped up production, which grew exponentially. By 1864, just one company, the Amer­ican Desi­ccating Company of New York, produced 150,000 pounds per month and claimed that a cubic yard of its product contained 40,000 rations at a cost of 25¢ per pound.

The theory was that when broken up and boiled in water, the vegetables would be reconstituted as a nutritious supplement to the Army's standard daily fare of hardtack, salted meat, and coffee.

Nutritious, maybe, but grey­ish-brown and tasting like nothing anyone could readily identify as food, Amer­ican soldiers quickly re-christened them "dese­crated" vegetables.

Declared one frustrated trooper of the 3rd Iowa Ca­val­ry:

"We have boiled, baked, fried, stewed, pickled, sweetened, salted it; tried it in puddings cakes and pies; but it sets all modes of cooking in defiance, so the boys break it up and smoke it in their pipes!"

Pvt. Charles Davis of the 13th Mass­a­chu­setts, describing his regiment's first encounter with the Army's dried vegetables, wryly observed that …

…from the flow of colorful language, which followed its consumption, we suspected it contained very powerful stimulating properties."

According to Maj. Abner R. Small of the famous 16th Maine Regiment …

When the stuff was fully dissolved, the water would remind one of a dirty brook with all the dead leaves floating around promiscuously. Still, it was a substitute for food."

Not everyone viewed the concoction unfavorably. Randolph B. Marcy, In­spec­tor-Gen­er­al of the U.S. Ar­my, claimed that it was "almost equal to fresh" and would keep for years if kept dry. "A small piece," he stated, "about half the size of a man's hand, when boiled, swells up so as to fill a vegetable dish."

As they always have, Amer­ican soldiers learned to deal with it.

Amateur army cooks found that adding salted beef or bacon to the mix, along with some crumbled hardtack crackers, produced a passable and filling, makeshift stew.

Over time, dehydrated vegetables got better.

By the First Boer War, fifteen years later (1880-81), the British Army marched with pressed soup blocks in their rucksacks, essentially desiccated vegetables in a beef stock base, that made a quite palatable soup ration.

Today, the U.S. military issues MREs ("Meal, Ready to Eat") as field rations that are essentially dehydrated everything, reconstituted with water and heat.

Like every military ration ever issued, some find the meals wanting. GI nicknames include "Meals Re­ject­ed by Every­one" and "Meals Rare­ly Ed­i­ble."^[2]

Dehydrated foods are now common. Dried soup mixes are staples on grocery shelves, as are instant sauces and gravies, dehydrated fruit of all kinds, dried potatoes, instant puddings, mac 'n cheese in a box with powdered cheese sauce, Jell-O, and Kool-Aid — all great-grand­child­ren of the excoriated "de­se­crat­ed" foods of the Amer­ican Civ­il War.

Vic­tor­ian Canned Food

Some canned meats and fish were purchased from companies like Underwood to supply the Union Army during the Amer­ican Civil War. ^[3] But canned goods were bulky and heavy, difficult to transport by horse-drawn wagon; and they were expensive, so the army bought only a small amount of them.

Where they were issued, they were often in bulk quantities for use in unit messes rather than in individual-serving cans.

There are, however, a few indications in soldier diaries and unit records of canned foods being issued to individual soldiers from time to time, always a welcome relief from standard army fare.

One of the first canned products purchased by the Army was condensed sweetened milk, which was issued as rations almost from the beginning of the war.

Invented by Gail Borden in 1853, after years of trial and error, condensed milk could be kept in a can for several years without spoiling. Borden's Eagle Brand was already a popular favorite by the outbreak of the war in 1860 and is still the best selling brand in the U.S. years later.

Canned fruits and vegetables were also widely available from — civilian merchants who followed the army, selling useful items such as cigars, luxury foodstuffs, and the ever-popular whiskey from wagons.

While canned goods never amounted to more than a tiny fraction of Union army rations, even this fraction meant many times their pre-war orders to the country's fledgling canneries.

About 5 million cans were processed in 1860. By the end of the war in 1865, output had risen to 30 million. (For comparison, today the U.S. canning industry packs 30 million cans in about 5 hours.)

The Victorian Canners

Canning, as a method of preserving food, originated in France in 1810.

Nicholas-François Appert, after 15 years of experimentation, published a description of preserving food by slowly cooking it in well-corked bottles in L'Art de Conserver. It would keep without spoiling for months or years.

He was awarded ₣12,000 (about $500.00 in 1810 dollars or $10,400 in today's inflated dollars ) by the French government as the prize for his discovery.

Another French­man, Phil­ipe de Gir­ard, showed that preserving food in tin-plated iron "canisters" was equally safe.

He engaged an English agent named Peter Durand to patent the process in England. Durand did so, receiving an English patent in 1813.

Durand also translated Appert's book into English, which attracted the attention of Bryan Donkin, an English engineer who, together with John Hall and John Gamble, bought the Durant patent for £1,000 and set up the world's first commercial canning factory, Donkin, Hall & Gamble, on Southwark Park Road, London.

Having procured an endorsement of their product from the Prince Regent (later George IV), the company was already producing canned meats for the Royal Navy by the fall of 1813.

Donkin's canisters were thick-walled iron pots, weighing as much as 20 lbs. when filled. They were fairly quickly redesigned as a tin-plated steel cylinder with a soldered cap and base.

Still thick-walled by today's standards, they were much thinner than the 1/2" walls of the original canister.

The tin helped retard rusting and did not taint the food inside. Today, the more likely plating is chrome on the outside and melamine or epoxy on the interior, especially if the content is acidic.

The word "canister" was rather quickly shortened to "can," and the process of preserving food in cans became "canning".

William Underwood

The Appert process was introduced into the U.S. in 1817 by William Underwood of Boston to preserve condiments, pickled vegetables, and cranberries.

He initially used bottles, but his cannery's production outstripped the ability of Boston-area glassmakers to keep him supplied, so in 1836 Underwood changed to tin-plated steel cans.

Underwood collaborated with Sam­uel Cate Pres­cott of the Mas­sa­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (MIT) to study the environment of food in cans with the goal of reducing the cost of canning while increasing the safety of canned seafood and vegetables.

They found, for example, that some bacteria can survive in the can until the internal temperature reaches 250^°F (121^°C), higher than the temperature used in most canning at the time.

Rather than keep the research private, the company published its findings in 1887 for the benefit of the entire canning industry.

Thomas Kensett

The tin can was pat­ent­ed in the U.S. by Tho­mas Ken­sett and his father-in-law, Ez­ra Dag­gett. The two men opened a cannery on the water­front in New York Ci­ty in 1819. Initially, like Under­wood, they preserved foodstuffs in glass jars, but glass was expensive and prone to breakage.

The company announced its switch to tin cans in a notice in the New York Ev­en­ing Post on July 18, 1822, and is believed to be the first canning company to adopt cans.

Their patent application, filed in 1822, was thought by patent officials to be a hoax, and it languished in a file for three years before a patent was finally granted in 1825 for "preserving … substances in vessels of tin."

John Landis Mason

Progress was also being made in home canning, where the major problem was a reliable seal for the bottles then in use.

One method of sealing involved pouring wax into the mouth of the jar to form a plug as it cooled, or coating a metal lid with wax to form a seal. Neither method was very satisfactory. Wax was difficult to remove and not always reliable.

Another option, only slightly more satisfactory, was the thumbscrew clamp and glass lid. The jar had a cast metal bracket with a thumbscrew that clamped down on a glass lid and held it tightly to the top of the jar. These were used with round rubber gaskets to create the seal.

But they had drawbacks. Too much clamping could break the glass lid, and too little produced an imperfect seal that allowed the food to spoil.

The solution was invented in 1859 by John Landis Mason, a tinsmith and inveterate tinkerer.

His jar with a metal screw-on lid was sealed with a rubber ring. Mason jars made home canning safe and reliable, and were a huge hit with home canners and jam-makers.

Mason, however, not realizing the magnitude of his invention, and figuring he would invent more important products later, sold his patent rights for a few hundred dollars. He never did invent a more important product.

Mason's jars, in various sizes, have been in continuous production by various manufacturers for over 130 years. ^{4}

Tinkers, Tinners, and Cappers

Early cans were handmade by a skilled metal worker called a tinner or tinker, who, on a good day, could produce as many as 60 cans.

A pendulum press that could roll tin-plated steel into a cylinder, forming it into a can, was patented by Henry Evans in 1846.

Using dies to bend and shape the metal, it made 60 cans in an hour. But the top and bottom caps had still to be fitted and hand-soldered closed by tinners who were now called "cappers".

In 1861, Louis McMurray, owner of the Frederick City Canning Company, pat­ented a machine that would cap cans quickly and reliably by crimping the caps around a rubber seal. 123456789 123456789 1234567890 ^[5]

Max Ams

It wasn't until 1896, however, that the mechanical roll crimping in use today was patented by of New York, making it possible for can ends to be attached mechanically using a crimped double seam sealed with a rubber compound.

An 1866 immigrant from Ger­many, Ams had already found funding for and organized his first business by 1868. The Max Ams Preserving Company sold canned preserved "fruits, jellies, apple butter, fish and meat specialties, French and German mustard, caviar, sturgeon and eels," according to a period advertisement.

The company was in toe-to-toe competition with H. J. Heinz until the 1880s, when Heinz's brand promotion strategy propelled that company to domination in the New York/New England market.

Ams then turned to the export market, and by 1916, the company was described by J. P. Zavalla in his The Canning of Fruits and Vegetables as a "very large export business of American food products."

Ams' son, Charles, a chemist, developed the Ams "sanitary can", a double seam crimping method of mechanically sealing cans by machine without the need for solder.

Max and Charles formed the Max Ams Machine Company to manufacture tin cans as well as canning equipment.

The company is now gone, but the name lives on in the Max Ams Building at 399 Washington Street in New York, built by Ams in 1887, and the town of Amston, Connecticut, that the company purchased in 1912 as a site for its factories.

Improved Canning Technology

Continuing advances in commercial canning made the process faster and less expensive.

Isaac Solomon

Appert's method required that food in sealed containers be cooked slowly for up to six hours. In 1861, Isaac Solomon, a Baltimore canner, discovered that adding calcium chloride to the cooking water in, which the cans were immersed raised its temperature to 240°, reducing cooking time to just 30 minutes and increasing production by a factor of twelve.

A. K. Shriver

In 1874, A. K. Shriver, another Baltimore canner, patented the closed kettle that cooked at very high temperatures using live steam or superheated water, decreasing cooking time to just a few minutes.

Lest­er E. Den­ison

Replacing hand labor with machines sped the process of preparing vegetables for canning.

A fully auto­mated corn shuck­er invented by Lest­er E. Den­ison in 1889 removed individual kernels of corn by pulling the ear of corn through a series of metal-toothed cylinders that stripped the kernels from the cob.

E. P. Scott, C. P. Chis­olm, & J. A. Chis­olm

In 1894, E. P. Scott, C. P. Chis­olm, and J. A. Chis­olm patented a mechanical pea shel­ler that did the work of 1,000 workers, reducing the cost of canned peas to a fraction of what it had been and making the vegetable a staple of the Amer­ican diet.

Its adoption was helped along by the 1907 introduction by the Minnesota Valley Canning Company of its La Sueur early June peas, which have been in continuous production for over Years.

Cannery Expansion

By the 1890s, one workman operating a machine could produce 1,500 cans each day, and by 1906, the E.W. Bliss Company was selling a machine that could make 3,000 cans in an hour.

The number of canneries rose rapidly.

The U.S. census showed 97 canneries in the U.S. in 1870, a number that had grown to 1,813 by 1900, employing 70,000 workers, and canned food was cheap enough to be afforded by most middle-class households as a supplement to locally-produced and seasonal foods.

Finally, The Can Opener

One reason for this explosive growth was the invention, finally, of an easy-to-use, safe, and reliable can opener.

Until the last third of the 19th century, there was no easy way to open cans.

Although the Un­ion Army issued an early lever-style can opener patented by Ez­ra War­ner in 1858, it was nowhere near as reliable or as easy to use as the Army's ubiquitous P-38 opener of WWII fame (See side­bar: Open­er, Can, Hand, Fold­ing, Type 1), and it was not readily available to smaller units in the field.

Sold­iers stabbed cans open with bayonets and even, in frustration, shot them open — a method that did not prove very satisfactory.

Finally, in 1870, Wil­li­am Wor­ces­ter Ly­man pa­tent­ed the first rotating wheel can opener.

It was safe, simple to use, and cheap enough to be affordable — so in­ex­pen­sive that they were often given away by grocers as promotions – engraved with the name of the benefactor – to encourage the purchase of canned goods.

It remained the basic device for opening cans even after 1966, when Ermal Cleon Fraze, a toolmaker in Ohio, invented the now ubiquitous pull-tab can.

The Victorian Ice Age

Despite major advances in commercial food preservation, most foods were still consumed in the place they were grown, and usually within a day or two to avoid spoilage.

In hot weather, raw milk would keep for only an hour or so before it began to turn. Chicken had to be eaten the day it was plucked. Beef and pork were safe for a day or two at most.

Pickling, salting, and drying allowed food to be kept longer but altered the taste, texture, and often the nutrition of the food.

It was well known that keeping food cold preserved it for a time, often as long as 10 to 15 days, but cooling food required ice, and in the days before electricity, where does one get ice in July?

Frederick Tudor

Frederic Tudor (1783-1864) thought he had the answer.

A businessman from Boston, he developed the process of transporting ice harvested from frozen ponds and streams by rail and ship to well-insulated "ice houses" throughout the world for summer cooling.^[6]

By keeping it well-insulated, Tu­dor could ship ice as far as 16,000 miles to Cal­cutta, In­dia.

The process was enhanced by Na­than­iel Jar­vis Wy­eth's invention of the two-bladed horse-drawn ice cutter in 1825 that produced uni­form-sized blocks that could more easily be stacked for storage and shipping, reducing the cost of harvesting ice from 30¢ a ton to under 10¢.

In New England, ice harvesting became the winter occupation of otherwise idle farmers. Virtually no New England lake or pond was spared.

Even the peaceful stillness of David Thoreau's Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts, was shattered as early as 1846 when over 100 workmen descended on the pond to remove over 10,000 tons of ice.

Walden ice commanded a premium price in Europe, for no reason other than it was from a famous pond.

The ice trade was worldwide by 1870, revolutionizing the meat, poultry, vegetable, and fruit industries and enabling the introduction of a whole range of new drinks and foods, including commercial ice cream, which the nation delightedly consumed in massive quantities, giving rise to the corner ice cream parlor in nearly every city, town, and hamlet in Vic­tor­ian America.

Commercial Refrigeration

But where ice truly revolutionized the Vic­tor­ian diet was in the refrigeration of railroad cars to preserve fresh meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit while traveling hundreds, even thousands, of miles to market.

Joel Tiffany patented the "Re­fri­ger­ateur Car", to transport meat and produce in a Re­fri­ger­ated environment in 1877.

Refrigerated boxcars or "reef­ers," attached to fast passenger trains, allowed the transport of perishable foods from coast to coast. As a result, Cal­i­forn­ia and Flor­i­da became the green­gro­cers to the nation.

Many fresh fruits and vegetables were sold year-round in major U. S. and Can­a­di­an cities after 1880 due to the rapid and safe transportation of these perishable products made possible by ree­fers.

Oranges, available all over the continent even in the depths of winter, became a common, and welcome, addition to children's Christ­mas stockings.

Nebraska Ice

Nebraska harvested thousands of tons of ice from its rivers and streams to supply the needs of the six major railroads passing through the state for ice to replenish reefers.

The Armour and Company Icehouse, completed in 1898 near Memphis, Nebraska, was one of the largest icehouses in the country. It supplied Armour's fleet of refrigerated railcars.

Crete Mills built another of Nebraska's large ice operations. Most of the Crete ice was sold to the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad (now the BNSF system).

The railroad shipped the freshly cut ice in specially-designed "ice service cars" to various re-icing stations along its mainline. As many as 100 cars of ice were shipped daily from Crete during the ice-cutting season.

The largest icehouse in the world, however, was built by the Union Pacific Railroad in North Platte, Nebraska, to service a rail line that spanned half of the continent from Oma­ha to Sac­ra­men­to.

It was over a half-mile long and supplied re-icing stations along the route where ice was added to refrigerator cars as needed.

Manufactured Ice

The need for many tons of ice to fill reefers spurred the development of manufactured ice to supplement natural ice harvested from lakes, ponds, and rivers with a more reliable source.

The first manufactured ice was produced in San Antonio, Texas, in 1866. By 1880, ice was being produced by steam-driven ice machines in commercial ice plants across the country.

"Artificial" or "factory" ice, as it was called, was better than natural ice harvested from lakes and ponds because it was cleaner – devoid of silt, vegetation, tadpoles, and fish entombed in natural ice. It was also "hard" ice, colder and longer-lasting than the "soft" ice harvested from ponds and lakes.

Just one company, Pacific Fruit Express – shipping iced fruits and vegetables from California to Eastern cities – owned 18 artificial ice plants by 1899, and produced over a million tons of ice annually.

And, this was just that one company. There were hundreds.

Every major and minor city had an ice plant by 1900, often combined with a food locker in, which homemakers could store food at near-freezing temperatures, a boon in the years before mechanical refrigeration made home freezers possible.

Lincoln's plant, Valley Ice, was built in 1899 and is still a going concern at its original location for over 100 years (although now owned by Arctic Glacier), providing packaged ice to bars, restaurants, and groceries throughout the Lincoln area.

Scandals & Food Regulation

Canned and preserved foods were slow to catch on with the Vic­tor­ian homemaker. In part, because they were relatively expensive, but also because they were widely perceived as unsafe.

Throughout the Vic­tor­ian era, the regulation of food safety in the U.S. was left up to the individual states, resulting in a patchwork of laws that could not be enforced across state lines.

While England had already passed universal food safety laws by 1860, the U.S. Con­gress, tardy as usual, was slow to follow suit.

Victorians were right to be suspicious of processed foods. Lurid reports of contaminated and adulterated foods were frequent in period newspapers, as were repeated reports of food scandals.

Few foods manufactured in the late 1880s were free of additives, some of, which could be harmful.

The problem was that no one knew for sure, which additives were harmful and, which were benign, or even healthy. The testing had never been done, and outside the U.S. De­pa­ment of Agri­cul­ture's Bureau of Chem­istry, the facilities for testing foods barely existed.

Stale, soiled, and even rancid butter could be oxidized by forcing air through it to remove any odor, then re-churning it with skim milk. The result was sold as fresh butter. Chro­mi­um (as in bumper chrome) and wood dye could be used to make it yellower.

Rotten eggs were deodorized with formaldehyde and sold for baking. Butchers kept bottles of "Freez­em", "Pre­serva­line", or "Ice­ine" on hand to disguise spoiled meat.

Unscrupulous breweries add­ed strych­nine to beer to increase its bitterness (so fewer expensive hops were needed) and op­ium powder to create an addiction to the beverage.

Co­ca-Co­la included cocaine in its formula, as did many cola drinks, that were originally sold as pa­tent med­i­cines.

The U.S. De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture's Di­vi­sion of Chem­is­try (later renamed the Bur­eau of Chem­is­try and still later to become the Food and Drug Administration), created in 1862, was the federal government's first step towards regulating the country's expanding food industry.

Concerned consumers could send suspicious food samples to gov­ern­ment-funded laboratories at Ex­peri­ment Sta­tions across the country. Food producers and manufacturers could use the USDA stamp of approval to weed out competitors that sold adulterated products.

The Bur­eau of Chem­is­try, under the leadership of progressive food reformer Harvey Washington Wiley, documented food adulteration practices in the U.S. in great detail in a series of bulletins entitled "Foods and Food Adulteration", but it lacked the authority to do anything about it.

The Department of Agri­cul­ture recommended a national food safety law to Con­gress, but it was defeated by the intense lobbying efforts – including widespread bribery – of liquor manufacturers and sellers of patent medicines.

Having lost in Con­gress, Wi­ley took the crusade for food safety to the streets and demonstrated a knack for generating an enormous amount of publicity. He recruited thousands of middle-class women into the fight for better food. Major supporters included the Gen­er­al Fe­der­a­ti­on of Wo­men's Clubs and the Na­tion­al Con­su­mers League.

The women were the nation's household purchasing agents who voted with their purses if not yet at the ballot box.

They were very effective in changing the practices of many food companies, and ultimately of forcing a reluctant Con­gress to pass food safety legislation.

Wiley captured the attention of the nation by establishing a volunteer poison squad of young men who agreed to eat only foods treated with suspect chemical preservatives, with the object of determining whether these additives were injurious to health.

The press made the Poison Squad a national sensation.

He also consulted with food companies themselves to improve their products. His most notable client was H. J. Heinz Company, which made consistent efforts to ensure the quality of its processed foods and was rewarded by Vic­tor­ian consumers with increased sales and rapid growth.

While Con­gress dithered and stalled, the food safety problem grew. The bluish tinge of milk diluted with as much as 1/3rd water was disguised by adding chalk or plaster dust to make it whiter and formaldehyde to retard spoiling. Sulphuric acid was used to spike vinegar diluted with tap water to increase acidity.

Chalk, bone meal, and even pipe clay were reportedly added to flour to make commercial bread whiter. (Although this is quite possibly an urban myth. Frederick Filby, in his A History of Food Adulteration & Analysis (1934), reported baking bread with these adulterants and finding that these are all easily detected in the finished product and would fool no one.

Pickles, green beans, and other canned green vegetables were colored with copper sulfate to make them greener, and cheddar cheese with red lead or vermilion (mercury sulfide), to give them a more vibrant red color.

Expensive foods were likely to be highly adulterated to reduce their cost. Coffee was often mixed with chicory, roasted wheat, roasted beans, and acorns for bulk, and burnt sugar as a darkener.

Chocolate was found by the Bureau of Chem­is­try to contain various amounts of arrowroot, wheat, corn, sago, tapioca, flour, and chicory for added weight. Minerals, red ochre, Venetian red, and iron compounds, were added for color.

In the late 1890s, a study by North Dakota's Agricultural Experiment Station, headed by Edwin F. Ladd, found that 70% of the chocolate sold in the state had been adulterated.

Canned mushrooms were bleached whiter with sulfites. In one study of ketchup, only Heinz was found to be pure. All the rest were made from waste products from tomato canning — leftover skin and pulp, over-ripe tomatoes, green tomatoes, starch, coal tar for color, and salicylic acid as a preservative.

Coal tar was used as the basis for a wide range of chemical dyes that found their way into foods. Metallic pigments were also widely used.

A study by the Bureau of Chem­is­try, published in 1905, found pigments derived from chrome, antimony, cobalt, zinc, lead, mercury, and iron. ^[7].

Products labeled honey were found to contain little or no honey. Their main ingredient was corn syrup tinted with a variety of substances to give the syrup a honey-like color. Sometimes a small piece of honeycomb was added to complete the deception.

Reputable producers were often at a competitive disadvantage because their products were less colorful and cost more than adulterated competitors.

As late as the Spanish-Amer­ican War in 1898, spoilage of canned foods was still a national problem.

Over 1,000 Amer­ican soldiers died of spoiled canned meat (the precise number being unknown since food poisoning was often misdiagnosed as Yellow Fever, which showed similar symptoms), while only 79 died of wounds suffered in combat.

After the war, Army General Nelson A. Miles, the commander of U.S. forces in Cuba, hugely angry over the unnecessary deaths of his soldiers, demanded a court of inquiry into what he called the "embalmed beef" sold to the army by the big three Chicago meatpackers — Philip Danforth Armour, Gustavus Franklin Swift, and Nelson Morris of Morris & Company.

The investigation resulted in the resignation of the Secretary of War, Russell A. Alger, and scathing criticism of the meatpacking industry by the popular press, but no prosecutions and no additional food regulation by Con­gress.

Tabasco & the C-ration Cookbook

In 1966, Ta­bas­co altered combat dining in Viet­nam and forever earned the gratitude of a whole generation of Amer­ican GIs with the publication of The Char­lie Ra­tion Cook Book.

Brig. Gen. Wal­ter S. McIl­hen­ny was a World War II Ma­rine veteran awarded the Na­vy Cross and Sil­ver Star for valor during the vicious fight against the Jap­an­ese for control of Guad­al­ca­nal (August 1942 — February 1943).

As the third president of the company that his family-owned, he determined to send soldiers and Ma­rines a cookbook that used standard C-ra­tions as the basic ingredients of savory field kit­chen meals — with a dash of Ta­bas­co, of course.

The cookbook, wrapped around a two-ounce bottle of Tabasco sauce and packed with a handful of P-38 can openers in a waterproof canister, was free for the asking to any soldier or Ma­rine in a combat zone.

Ma­rines on patrol in I (Eye) Corps, Vietnam soon learned to keep a sharp lookout not just for the usual signs of an ambush and booby-traps but for Thai basil, chives, ci­lan­tro, ci­tron­el­la, pars­ley, pep­per cress, or cor­i­an­der to add to the pot.

Tabasco has updated its cookbook for the new military field ration, Meals, Ready to Eat (MRE). En­ti­tled "The Un­of­fic­i­al MRE Re­ci­pe Book­let". It includes recipes for such delicacies as Ham Gre­nades and Sarge's Orange Nut Cake.

It's still free for the asking to all military personnel in conflict areas.

Breast of Chicken Under Bullets

• * One can boned chicken
• * One can cheese spread
• * Salt and pepper to taste
• * White bread

• ---

• - Dash Tabasco sauce
• - Two spoons^† butter, oil or fat, if available
• * Included in the Basic C-ration.

Heat the boned chicken in its can. Melt the cheese spread. If butter or oil is available, add two spoons. Season with salt and pepper and Ta­bas­co. Cut loaf of white bread in half, trimmed if so desired. Place a mound of chicken over each half of white bread and cover each with the hot melted cheese sauce. This should stick to your ribs.

† A “spoon” refers to the plastic spoon included in every C-ration. For the C-Ra­ti­on Cook­book, it is the basic measuring device.

McIlhenny's generosity created a loyal base of Tabasco fans that will tolerate no other red pepper sauce. Bring another brand into a Viet­nam-era Ma­rine's kit­chen, and you risk bodily injury.

ss

Royal War­rant of Appointment by HRH Elizabeth II to MciLhenny as the supplier of the Queen's preferred red pepper sauce

And lest you think its popularity is limited to rednecks and Cajuns, you should know that Tabasco, sold in England since 1870, held a Royal Warrant of Ap­point­ment from HRH Eli­za­beth II as the "preferred pepper sauce of the Queen's House­hold". ^[8]

The Queen was many things to many people but absolutely none of them was a redneck or Cajun.

The Queen's Mother (also named Eli­za­beth) was so fond of Tabasco that she is said to have sent her staff out to scour London for a bottle during the scarcity of the wartime Blitz, and when told there was none to be had anywhere in the city, reportedly took the news philosophically.

Gen. Miles was court-mar­ti­al­ed for his unceasing denunciations of the army's procurement practices and suspended from duty until his mandatory retirement. But his crusade ultimately resulted in a reform of the Army's commissary department.

By the First World War – a single generation later – the Army's quar­ter­mast­er corps was able to supply four million Amer­i­can soldiers and Ma­rines with wholesome, nourishing field rations, including freshly baked bread from field bakeries, that were the envy of our French, Brit­ish and Can­a­di­an allies, along supply lines that stretched over 4,500 miles from Amer­i­ca's mid-west farms to the Wes­tern Front in France and Bel­gi­um making "the Amer­i­can Ex­pe­di­tion­ary Force were the best-fed army in World War I." at a cost of 26¢ per soldier per day ($5.97 in 2025 inflated dollars).

Vic­tor­ian Processed Foods

As a result of the uncertainty about the safety of processed foods, Vic­tor­ians used them sparingly.

It was not until the early part of the 20th century, when, in response to egregious food adulteration and packing house scandals revealed by Upton Sinclair in his semi-fictional work, The Jungle, that a very tardy Con­gress finally acted to pass the Pure Food and Drug and the Meat Inspection Acts, did consumer suspicion of prepared foods start to fade.

Nonetheless, many of our best-known food brands got their start in the late Vic­tor­ian age.

Underwood canned meats, Kellogg cereals, Coca-Cola beverages, Heinz condiments, Graham crackers, Welch's grape juice, and Fig Newtons are just a few examples.

The food companies that did well were those, that garnered a reputation for safe, wholesome products.

The H. J. Heinz Com­pa­ny, in particular, focused its marketing on the purity of its products with various slogans that advised consumers to ask for Heinz by name. It was one of the most vocal industry supporters of the pure food movement.

Heinz ketchup is still the best-selling brand in the U.S., with 50% share, and its baked beans, pickles, sauces, and relishes have graced a great many dinner tables since its founding in 1875.

The McIl­henny Com­pany introduced Tabasco pepper sauce to the nation's tables in 1868, and the fiery condiment has been made exactly the same way for over 140 years.

It needs no preservatives. There is not a micro-critter alive that could survive in Tabasco sauce. If one ever does, it will probably take over the world in a few weeks.

Graham crackers made from unbleached flour were invented by the Rev. Sylvester Graham in 1929 as a health food.

Graham was a vocal critic of the Amer­ican processed food industry and advocated a strict, what we would now term "organic," diet, free of meat and alcohol in a health regimen that included frequent bathing — something fairly rare at the time.

Commercial bakers adopted the recipe but added sugar and honey to make it more like a cookie.

Candy-making began its industrialization with the creation of the Necco Wafer in 1847 by Oliver Chase, a Boston pharmacist, who converted a pill press to making candy "lozenges", originally flavored with cinnamon and clove.

By the 1870s, the French confection, the marshmallow, had migrated to Amer­i­ca, where it was reformulated with a gelatin base rather than the hard-to-get marshmallow plant.

Paired with the Graham Cracker and a Hershey Milk Chocolate bar after 1899, it ultimately became S'Mores, considered by every child to be one of the basic food groups.

After 1869, you could cool the Tabasco burn with a tall, cold glass of Welch's Grape Juice. The pasteurized grape drink was invented by temperance advocate Thomas Bramwell Welch as an "unfermented" substitute for communion wine in Protestant churches. Its reputation for wholesomeness made it a fixture in Vic­tor­ian iceboxes.

Secretary of State Wil­li­am Jen­nings Bry­an served the juice in place of wine at an official state dinner in 1913. It replaced the wine on Navy Ships by order of the Secretary of the Navy in 1914 (an order that was rescinded in short order).

As a wine substitute at religious observances, it was much more successful, replacing communion wine in most Protestant churches.

As a refreshing juice drink, it was even more successful and has been a favorite among kids of all ages for over 100 years.

Phil­adel­phia Cream Cheese appeared in 1872, invented by dairyman Will­iam A. Law­rence in Ches­ter, New York, as an Amer­ican version of the soft Eu­ro­pe­an cheeses like Neuf­chât­el.

It had no association whatsoever with Phil­adel­phia. Law­rence adopted the name solely because Phil­adel­phia had a national reputation for quality cheese-mak­ing. The company is now part of Kraft Heinz.

Quaker Oats, dry oat cereal flakes, was introduced in 1877 by the Quaker Mill Company. It was followed in 1884 by Cerealine Flakes from the Amer­ican Hominy Co., a dry cereal product made from corn grits, and Kellogg's Corn Flakes in 1896, initially as a su­gar­less diet supplement. With sugar added, it was reintroduced as a breakfast cereal in 1906, and dried processed cereal with milk became the basic Amer­ican breakfast almost overnight.

Dr. Pepper was sold in drug stores beginning in 1885, and Coca-Cola in 1886. Both were initially marketed as digestive aids.

Coca-Cola's formula included cocaine (the "coca" in Coca-Cola) and caffeine. Just before the Pure Food Acts became law in the early 20th century, the company removed the cocaine but left the caffeine, triggering a multi-year legal battle with the federal government's food regulators, who viewed caffeine as an adulterant in a beverage commonly consumed by children.

In the end, both parties, seeing no end to the struggle, reached a settlement.

Caffeine remained an ingredient in Coke, but at a reduced level acceptable to the government. It was reduced further in 1985 when Coke introduced "New Coke." The change nearly caused rioting. Coca-Cola quickly shelved New Coke and reverted to its century-old secret formula — caffeine-included.

Fig Newtons appeared on grocery shelves in 1892. It was the first cookie to be factory-produced on an industrial scale, made by the Ken­nedy Bisc­uit Comp­any, hich later became part of Na­bis­co.

Invented by Phil­adel­phia baker and fig-lover Charles Ro­ser, the biscuit was reportedly named "New­tons" after the city of New­ton, Mas­sa­chu­setts, although no one seems to know why.

Neither the taste, configuration, nor size of the cookie has changed in over years. Its distinctive pillow shape has been widely copied as the "required" configuration for fruit bars of all kinds, including the Ap­ple, Straw­ber­ry, Rasp­ber­ry, and Mixed Ber­ry New­tons, also sold by Na­bis­co.

It is one of two cookie brands to have its own "day": January 16 – celebrated annually as Na­tion­al Fig New­ton Day. The other is Or­e­os, on March 6.

Cracker Jack was first sold at the Co­lum­bi­an Ex­posi­tion in Chi­ca­go in 1893 by its inventor, Fre­der­ick "Fritz" Ru­eck­heim, a Ger­man immigrant, as "candied popcorn and pea­nuts".

It got the name Crack­er Jack in 1896, reportedly after a salesman pronounced the popcorn and peanut treat "cracker­jack", a common slang expression of the time meaning something of the best kind.

It did not become a kids' favorite, however, until 1912 when a "prize" was added to the box (and every kid learned to open the box from the bottom, where the toy was).^[9] 

Its immutable link to base­ball was forged in 1908 when actor and tin-pan-alley composer Al­bert Von Tilzer published Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a tune that included the lines …

"Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.
I don't care if I never get back."

When he wrote the tune, Tilzer had never seen a baseball game.

In 1900, Hills Bros. Coffee first used vacuum packing for its ground coffee. Removing the air from the can reduced oxidation and kept the coffee fresher. Most other coffee companies soon adopted the process.

In the late Vic­tor­ian age, the ground coffee business was extremely competitive, and most brands "extended" their blends with additives to make them less expensive.

Chicory was commonly used as an additive to or substitute for coffee in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War when coffee was scarce due to the Union blockade of Southern ports.

Many soldiers came to prefer the taste of this "Cajun" blend. It is still available from the Reily Food Company as Luzianne Coffee, sold widely in grocery stores. Even those not in Old Dixie.

To avoid adulteration, many Victorians simply bought whole beans and ground the coffee themselves. A hand-powered coffee mill was a common appliance in Vic­tor­ian kitchens.

The Vic­tor­ian Search for The "Rational" Kitchen

The study of kit­chen design and organization had its genesis in the Vic­tor­ian period. The twin disciplines of home economics and household management began in the mid-19th century. Fledgling home economists formalized methods of maintaining a home that strove to remove folklore and custom from kit­chen organization and replace it with planning based on rational analysis. … (Continues)

Footnotes:

Rev. 07/27/24