The Chemistry of Cookery

increase and multiply. The cream that rises carries some of them with it, and they are thus in the butter, either dead or alive—we know not which, but have to accept the risk. Now, take the case of ‘bosch.’ The cow is slaughtered. The waste fat—that before the days of palm oil and vaseline was sold for lubricating machinery—is skilfully prepared, made up into 2 lb. rolls, delicately wrapped in special muslin, or prettily moulded and fitted into ‘Normandy’ baskets. What is the risk in eating this? None at all provided always the ‘bosch’ is not adulterated with cream-butter. The special disease germs do not survive the chemistry of digestion, do not pass through the glandular tissues of the follicles that secrete the living fat, and therefore, even though the cow should have fed on sewage grass, moistened with infected sewage water, its fat would not be poisoned. What we require in connection with this is commercial honesty: that the thousands of tons of ‘bosch’ now annually made shall be sold as ‘bosch,’ or, if preferred, as ‘oleomargarine,’ or ‘butterine,’ or any other name that shall tell the truth. In order to render such commercial honesty possible to shopkeepers, more intelligence is demanded among their customers. A dealer, on whom I can rely, told me lately that if he offered the ‘bosch’ or ‘butterine’ to his other customers as he was then offering it to me, at 8½_d._ per lb. in 24-lb. box, or 9_d._ retail, he could not possibly sell it, and his reputation would be injured by admitting that he kept it; but that the same people who would be disgusted with it at 9_d._ will buy it freely at double the price as prime Devonshire fresh butter; and, he added, significantly, ‘I cannot afford to lose my business and be ruined because my customers are fools.’ To pastrycooks and others in business it is sold honestly enough for what it is, and used instead of butter. In the ‘Journal of the Chemical Society’ for January 1844, page 92, is an account of experiments made by A. Mayer