A formidable list may be made of butter adulterants at different times and places,—chalk, gypsum, alum and borax, bo racic and salicylic acids, glucose, flour, etc.; but for practical purposes they may be reduced to water, buttermilk, cheese, salt and oleomar garine (q.v.) as increasers of bulk, with ar notto, aniline yellow, etc., to improve the color. The latter is hardly adulteration either in bad intent or bad effect; the public universally con nects a yellow tint with richness in cream,— quite irrationally, as the milk of many cows gives butter as white as tallow, yet of perfect quality and taste,— and the harmless pigments merely remove incorrect prejudices. The first four others are equally innocuous (save that buttermilk makes it grow rancid more quickly; it is usually carelessness or incompetence rather than fraud) and are mere diluents. In normal butter, water should not exceed 12 per cent and salt 5 per cent. By adding certain chemicals to butter and churning them together the butter may be made to take up from 25 to 35 per cent of water and 10 per cent of salt. Oleomargarine is not even an inferior product in any respect; its nutritive value equals that of butter and it keeps better; and the severity of the laws regulating its manufacture and in spection guarantee its quality beyond that of any other manufactured article. Its use as an adulterant is to be condemned chiefly on the ground of fraud in selling oleomargarine at butter prices. Glucose is sometimes found as an adulteration in butter to the amount of 10 per cent. The chemical preservatives deemed adulterants in butter are borax and boric acid chiefly and rarely formaldehyde and salicylic and sulphurous acids.
English cheeses are practically not adulterated. Fancy foreign cheeses, as the Swiss, etc., often contain coloring matter and potato meal. American cheese is by law per mitted to contain coloring matter and is re quired to contain "in its water-free substance not less than 50 per cent of milk fat." How ever, it is not forbidden to sell cheese with less than this proportion of milk fat provided it is sold as usldmmed cheese," a provision too commonly ignored. A frequent deception i practiced is the substitution of some cheap fat in cheese for the natural butter fat of the milk skimmed before being made into cheese.
Cocoa and The chief adulter ants are starch and sugar; but they have also contained wheat and potato flour, sawdust, oils and fats and other things, with iron rust as col oring matter. Ground cocoa shells and ar rowroot are common adulterants. The tests are for theobromine (the characteristic prin ciple of the cacao bean), fat, starch, inorganic matter, etc.
Its usual adulterations are seeds (roasted peas, beans, etc.) or roots (chicory, dandelion, carrots, turnips, parsnips, etc.) with caramel to color their gray tint. All these are mere diluents; though there are some who actually prefer an admixture of chicory for its flavor though it gives black, bitter and mud dy grounds. It and the roots may be easily
detected by putting a little of the sample into a glass of water; each bit of chicory or other root will be soon the centre of a yellowish brown cloud which will rapidly spread till the water is all colored. A more serious adultera tion is made by adding "coffee pellets,"—imi tation coffee beans made of roasted wheat, peas, and molasses — to bean coffee. These are not discovered by the usual purchaser and when ground disappear in the dust and chaff. Coloring matters are frequently used to make. an inferior grade of raw coffee resemble a high-priced grade. There are also chemical tests for both tea and coffee, by determining the amount of theine or caffeine, the percentage of matter soluble in water, treatment with hot mineral acids which increase the sugar in cof fee but not in chicory, etc. The microscope, however, is the most effective detector of adul terations in coffee.
The extreme cheapness of sugar has practically put an end to the adul teration of all but the very poorest grades of candies; and those mainly with the harmless terra alba, or pipe-clay, and paraffin wax. The term ((sugar," however, in this use of it in cludes glucose or corn syrup, permitted by law to be used in food products. A wide range of coal-tar colors are used but in such minute quantities as to be considered harmless.
Distilled Whisky, brandy and rum are often purely factitious, being made from caramel and dilute alcohol and the characteristic flavors by ethers of various sorts and fusel oil (often left in genuine whisky, etc.,. from carelessness or the cost of purification, and recognizable by its nauseous smell when a little of it is evaporated in the hand). The more common adulterants are raisin syrup, prune juice and glucose, with creosote, cayenne pepper and ((cognac oil" (made from cocoanuts) for flavoring.
The adulteration in each case is special, with some article looking like the gen uine but inert. This is, of course, potential manslaughter wholesale, as each prescription made from such materials might cost a life. Unfortunately, a large part of the drugs are imported and the fraud is probably committed before they come to this country at all. Many of the adulterations of drugs, however, must be considered accidental; they consist of dirt upon roots insufficiently cleaned and twigs and stems included with valuable leaves and berries. There are also the more serious deteriorations from age or careless handling, which amount practically to adulteration. Among this latter class are especially articles in which the valued ingredients are essential oils, as in cinnamon, cloves, peppermint leaves, lavender flowers, etc. When not intelligently cared for these articles lose their active principles by evaporation.