Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460. Various
with a broth or jelly prepared from portions of the same meat; corking the jars closely; incasing the corks with a luting formed of quicksilver and cheese; placing the corked jars in a boiler of cold water; boiling the water and its contents for an hour; and then allowing the cooling process to supervene very gradually.
Until the recent disclosures concerning the preserved meats in the government depôts, the extent of the manufacture, or rather preparation, was very little known to the general public. In the last week of 1851, an examination, consequent on certain suspicions which had been entertained, was commenced at the victualling establishment at Gosport. The canisters—for since Appert's time stone jars have been generally superseded by tin canisters—contain on an average about 10 pounds each; and out of 643 of these which were opened on the first day's examination, no fewer than 573 were condemned as being utterly unfit for food. On the next day, 734 were condemned out of 779; and by the fourth day, the number examined had risen to 2707, of which only 197 were deemed fit for food. Such wretched offal had been packed in the canisters, instead of good meat, that the stench arising from the decomposing mass was most revolting; the examiners were compelled to use Sir William Burnett's disinfecting fluid abundantly, and even to suspend their labours for two or three days under fear of infection. The canisters formed part of a supply sent in by a contractor in November 1850, under a warrant that the contents would remain good for five years; the filling of the canisters was understood to have been effected at Galatz, in Moldavia, but the contractor was in England. The supply amounted to 6000 canisters, all of which had to be examined, and out of which only a few hundred were found to contain substances fit for food. Instead of good meat, or in addition to a small quantity of good meat, the examiners found lung, liver, heart, tongue, kidney, tendon, ligament, palate, fat, tallow, coagulated blood, and even a piece of leather—all in a state of such loathsome putridity as to render the office of the examiners a terrible one.
Of course nothing can be predicated from such atrocities as these against the wholesomeness of preserved food; they prove only the necessity of caution in making the government contracts, and in accepting the supplies. The Admiralty shewed, during subsequent discussions, that large supplies had been received from various quarters for several years, for use on shipboard in long voyages and on arctic expeditions; that these had turned out well; and that the contractor who was disgraced in the present instance, was among those who had before fulfilled his contracts properly. Fortunately, there is no evidence that serious evil had resulted from the supply of the canisters to ships; the discovery was made in time to serve as a useful lesson in future to government officials and to unprincipled contractors.
The jury report before adverted to, points out how cheap and economical these preserved meats really are, from the circumstance, that all that is eatable is so well brought into use. It is affirmed by the manufacturers, that meat in this form supplies troops and ships with a cheaper animal diet than salt provisions, by avoiding the expense of casks, leakage, brine, bone, shrinkage, stowage, &c., which are all heavy items, and entail great waste and expenditure; and by a canister of the former being so much smaller than a cask of the latter, in the event of one bad piece of meat tainting the whole contents. The contents of all the cases, when opened, are found to have lost much of the freshness in taste and flavour peculiar to newly-killed meat; they are always soft, and eat as if overdone. As a matter of choice, therefore, few or no persons would prefer meat in this state to the ordinary unpacked and recently-cooked state. But the important fact to bear in mind is, that the nutritious principles are preserved; as nutriment, they are unexceptionable, and they are often pleasantly seasoned and flavoured.
In the ordinary processes of preparation, as carried on in London and other places, the tin canisters have a minute hole, through which the air may be expelled, while the meat is simmering or boiling within; and in the case of poultry being preserved whole, extra precautions are necessary, to insure the expulsion of the air from the hollow bones of the birds. Soups are more easily prepared than solid meat, on account of the greater facility for getting rid of the confined air. The minute air-hole in the canister is soldered down when the process is completed.
M. Alexis Soyer, who has a notoriety in London as the prince of cooks, and a very ingenious man—a sort of Paxton of the kitchen—wrote to the daily journals, about the time of the disclosure at Gosport, to offer a few suggestions. He said: 'No canister ought to contain more than about six pounds of meat, the same to be very slightly seasoned with bay-salt, pepper, and aromatic herbs in powder, such as bay-thyme and bay-leaf, a small quantity of which would not be objectionable even for invalids. No jelly should be added to the meat; the meat, and the meat alone, should produce its own jelly. With the bones and trimmings of the above, a good stock should be made without vegetables, well reduced and skimmed, to form a very strong transparent demi-glaze; six-pound canisters should be filled with the same, bearing a special mark, and one of these allowed to every dozen of the others. This demi-glaze, when diluted in water, would make six gallons of very good broth, with which any kind of soup could be made in a very short time.' He also points out how the condition of the preserved meat may be guessed by the external appearance of the canister. If either the top or bottom of the canister be convex, like the upper surface of a watch-glass, the contents are in a state of decomposition; the bulging being occasioned by the gases generated during the chemical changes. If the contents of the canister be sound, the top and bottom will be either quite flat, or slightly concave.
The Jury on Food, at the Great Exhibition, had quite an embarras des richesses; they were surrounded by hundreds of canisters of preserved provisions, all of which they were invited to open and taste. They say, or their reporter says, that the merits of the contributions 'were tested by a selection from each; the cases were opened in the presence of the jury, and tasted by themselves, and, where advisable, by associates. The majority are of English manufacture, especially the more substantial viands; France and Germany exhibiting chiefly made-dishes, game, and delicacies—of meat, fish, soups, and vegetables.' It is an important fact for our colonies, that viands of this description are as well prepared in Australia, Van Diemen's Land, Canada, and the Cape of Good Hope, as in the mother-country. 'Animal food is most abundant and cheap in some of those colonies. In Australia, especially, during seasons of drought, it is wasted in extraordinary quantities; flocks are slaughtered for the tallow alone, and herds, for their bones and hides. Were the meat on these occasions preserved, it cannot be doubted that it could be imported into England, and sold at a cheaper rate than fresh meat in our metropolitan markets, to the great benefit of the lower-classes.' This is a statement well worth being borne in mind by some of those who are at present dazzled with gold-digging wonders.
In respect to the preserved meats at the Great Exhibition, many were merely cured or dried meats. From Canada, for instance, they comprised hams, bacon, tongues, and barrels of beef and pork. Among the miscellaneous contributions were grated beef, canisters of fresh salmon, 'admirable boiled mutton in tin cases,' dried mullets, 'mouton rôti,' fish, meats preserved in a fresh state by simple drying—on a plan practised in Switzerland—and preserved larks. Not the least remarkable was a preserved pig, which reclined in all its glory on the floor of the south-west gallery, and was a successful example of curing on a large scale. Still more striking than this, was the large partridge-pie, placed somewhat out of general notice in the 'Netherlands' department; a formidable pie it truly was, for it contained 150 partridges, with truffles, and weighed 250 pounds: it had been made a year before it was forwarded to London. But among the contributions more immediately relating to our present subject, may be mentioned those of Mr Gamble, which comprised, among others, a canister of preserved boiled mutton, which had been prepared for the arctic expedition in 1824; many such canisters were landed at Fury Beach in Prince Regent's Inlet; they were found by Sir John Ross at that spot in 1833 in a perfect state, and again by Sir James Ross in 1849, the meat being as sweet and wholesome as when prepared a quarter of a century before.
The range of these preserving processes is singularly wide and varied. If we take the trade-list of one of the manufacturers, such as that of Messrs Hogarth of Aberdeen, and glance through it, we shall find ample evidence of this. There are nearly twenty kinds of soups selling at about 2s. per quart-canister. There is the concentrated essence of beef, much more expensive, because containing the nutriment of so much more meat; and there are, for invalids, concentrated broths of intermediate price. There are about a dozen kinds of fish, some fresh and some dried. There are various kinds of poultry, roast