The Chemistry of Cookery

the drug itself by each plant is very small, the supplies of oil may be considerable; 571,542 cwt. of seeds were exported from India last year, of which 346,031 cwt. went to France. Palm oil, though at present practically unknown in the kitchen, may easily become an esteemed material for the frying-kettle. At present, the familiar uses of palm oil in candle-making and for railway grease will cause my suggestion to shock the nerves of many delicate people, but these should remember that before palm oil was imported at all, the material from which candles and soap were made, and by which cart wheels and heavy machinery were greased, was tallow—_i.e._ the fat of mutton and beef. The reason why our grandmothers did not use candles for frying when short of dripping or suet was that the mutton fat constituting the candle was impure, so are the yellow candles and yellow grease in the axle-boxes of the railway carriages. This vegetable fat is quite as inoffensive in itself, quite as wholesome, and—sentimentally regarded—less objectionable, than the fat obtained from the carcass of a slaughtered animal. When common sense and true sentiment supplant mere unreasoning prejudice, vegetable oils and vegetable fats will largely supplant those of animal origin in every element of our dietary. We are but just beginning to understand them. Chevreul, who was the first to teach us the chemistry of fats, is still living, and we are only learning how to make butter (not ‘inferior Dorset,’ but ‘choice Normandy’) without the aid of dairy produce. There is, therefore, good reason for anticipating that the inexhaustible supplies of oil obtainable from the vegetable world—especially from tropical vegetation—will ere long be freely available for kitchen uses, and the now popular product of the Chicago hog factories will be altogether banished therefrom, and used only for greasing cart-wheels and other machinery. As a practical conclusion of this part of my subject, I will quote from the ‘Oil Trade Review’ of this month, December 1884, the current wholesale prices of some of the oils possibly available for frying purposes: olive oil, from