[A] Mon Bureau consultatif des Arts et Manufactures.

[B] About £500 sterling.

[C] “The salt meat with which the crews of vessels are fed, appears to be one of the principal causes of the scurvy. It seems that the same causes which operate to prevent the fermentation of meat, renders it also difficult of digestion. Though a small quantity of salt may be an obstacle in the way of putrefaction, the too abundant and frequent use which is made of it, must cause great obstructions in the smaller vessels of the body, and these obstructions cannot fail to overload the stomach of men who have to digest dry vegetables and biscuits, which sailors advanced in years are not always able to chew completely. Bad digestion and obstruction in the smaller vessels may occasionally give rise to ulcers in the mouth, and spots, which denote the scurvy.”—SantÉ des Marins, by Duhamel.

[D] La SociÉtÉ d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie nationale.

[E] It is obvious, that for the use of private families, and for carrying on the process on a small scale, nothing further will be requisite, than such vessels and other conveniences as are found in every house in the country, where provisions are cured for the consumption of the family during winter.

[F] The reason why it is necessary that large boilers should be furnished with wide cocks is, that it would take up too much time to let so large a body of water, always placed over a heated stove, remain till it became cool; and that, on the other hand, it would do great injury to those substances to let them remain too long exposed to the heat. Without inconvenience, therefore, in private families, any cauldron or earthen vessel may be taken for a water-bath, provided the water rises to the rim of the bottle. In case there should be no vessel sufficiently high, the bottles may be laid down in the water-bath, care being taken to pack them well together, lest they should be broken. Many operations have succeeded well with me this way. The corks are somewhat more liable to burst outwards; but if the bottles are well corked, there is nothing to be feared. For instance, it would not be advisable to lay on their sides, bottles, or other vessels stopped up with stoppers consisting of different pieces of any substance, because the action of the fire upon this kind of stopper is stronger; and however well the vessel might be corked, it would not be advisable to incur the risque.

Small water-baths are the more convenient, because they may be placed any where, and removed at will. They soon become cold. The bottles are taken out when the water is sufficiently cool to allow of the finger being put in, and thus the operation is terminated.

[G] The French litre, consists of nearly two wine pints and a half, English measure.

[H] Many persons believe they have corked well, when they have forced the cork even with the mouth of the bottle; but this is a great mistake. On the contrary, whenever the whole of the cork, instead of withstanding the blows of the bat, is forced into the bottle, it is adviseable to draw it out and substitute another in its place. Thus the believing that a bottle corked very low is well corked, because no liquor escapes when the bottle is turned with its neck downwards, is an error, which, joined to the use of bad corks, causes a number of losses. He who corks with care and judgment is satisfied that the operation has been performed well by the resistance of the cork to the blows of the bat, and never thinks of turning the neck of the bottle downwards. It is besides sufficient to reflect on the punctures met with in cork, and on all the hidden defects which may subsist in the interior even of the finest cork, by means of which, the air may be introduced; in order to be convinced of the propriety of making use of none but the very best corks, and that, after having well compressed them in the machine for that purpose; and also of corking them so closely that they become very much compressed in the middle.

It is in this way only, that losses can be prevented from frequently taking place, which have often no other cause than bad corking; for, if a bottle does not instantly run when carelessly corked, it proceeds from this circumstance, that the air has not had time to penetrate through the apertures which may be in the interior of the cork: and, in fact, how different is the quality of wine, drawn from the same cask! and how many bottles do we meet with, which have lost more or less of their contents!

[I] Jellies, essences of meat, the substance of ice and portable soups, which are prepared from the soft and white parts of animals, preserved at a great expence by means of evaporation, and drying in stoves with the aid of hartshorn and isinglass, furnish merely factitious aliments, without flavour or any other than a burnt or mouldy taste.

[J] The celebrated Chaptal says, in his ElÉmens de Chimie, discours prÉliminaire, p. cxxxi. “We hear in manufactories of nothing but the caprice of experiment, but this vague phrase has its origin only in the ignorance in which the workmen are of the true principles of their art; for nature does not act according to any principle of discernment, but obeys constant laws. The dead matter which we employ in our manufactories, exhibits necessary effects in which the will can have no share, and consequently can have no caprice. Make yourself acquainted, we should say to the manual operator, with the substance on which you are to operate, study better the principles of your art, and you will be able to foresee, predict and calculate every thing. It is your ignorance alone which renders your operations a constant groping in the dark, and a discouraging alternation of success and disappointment.”

In fact, the operator who proceeds with a perfect knowledge of the principles of his art, and of the results of its application, will never ascribe the failure of his process to caprice, but will impute it to the neglect of some indispensable precaution in the application of his principle; and his disappointment will serve as a guide for him to calculate better and improve his preparatory process. Convinced that the effects that flow from his principle are invariable, he knows that every kind of loss and damage can proceed only from an error in the application of his principle.

[K] This operation performed on a great scale, that is in a larger boiler, would require too much exactness, as it would be more difficult to command just the due degree of heat in such a boiler than in a small water-bath which may be set on and taken off at pleasure.

[L] That is, of Reamur, or 200 of Fahrenheit, in like manner, the 80 of Reamur, or boiling point mentioned below, is 212 of Fahrenheit. T.

[M] For this reason the translator adds the original names of the vegetables spoken of. It may happen that some of the kinds of fruits and roots mentioned by the author, do not exactly correspond with those which are considered as the same in this country. Whatever peculiarities there may be in the articles themselves, these will hardly affect the treatment they have to undergo in the process of preserving them. T.

[N] A species of the Bella-donna very generally made use of as an ingredient in French soups. T.

[O] The mode of extracting the juice of plants by means of water has more or less inconvenience. All those juices which have a principle that is very volatile and easy to evaporate, lose infinitely, even in warm water; much more so therefore, when the heat of the water is raised to a higher degree, and when the plants have been left for a long time in digestion.

Aromatic vegetables are infused, when the object is to preserve the aroma, and not impart to the water the extractive principle which the plant contains. Therefore, tea and coffee are made by infusion. But all the theories ancient and modern, and all the new apparatus employed to seize and hold fast the aroma of the coffee are still very deficient.

Ebullition which is often times resorted to in order to extract the aroma of plants by means of distillation, in spite of all the apparatus made use of for keeping the same closed up, most frequently destroys the nature of the productions.

Not only are the principles extracted by the water injured by this first operation, but they scarcely retain any strength after the evaporation which it is usual to make them undergo, in order to form essences of them. The extract therefore, exhibits nothing but the appearance of the soluble and nutritive principles of vegetable and animal substances; since fire, which is necessary to form an essence by means of evaporation, destroys the aroma and almost all the properties of the substance which contains it.

[P] See the report made to the SociÉtÉ d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie nationale, by Mr. Bouriat, in the name of the Committee. Two half-bottles, one of milk, the other of whey, after remaining uncorked from twenty to thirty days, had been re-corked with little cork; nevertheless the two substances retained all their properties.

[Q] “L’instruction sur les moyens de supplÉer le sucre dans les principaux usages qu’on en fait pour la mÉdecine et l’Économie domestique; par M. Parmentier.”

[R] The original is more precise, and refers to an instrument made use of in France for ascertaining the density of liquors, an ArÆometer, which, at least in its application to grape syrup, is unknown in this country: the words are, “les degrÉs de cuisson de 25, 30, ou 33 À l’arÉomÉtre, devient indiffÉrent pour conserver ces sirups,” &c. T.

[S] Some persons of enlightened understandings, but who have, perhaps, delivered themselves over to the spirit of system and prejudice, have declared themselves against my method, alleging a pretended impossibility. But is it then difficult on the principles of a sound, natural philosophy, to assign a reason for the preservation of alimentary substance by my process? May we not infer, that the application of caloric, or heat, to the water-bath, operates in producing a gentle fusion of the constituent fermenting principles, so as to destroy the predominating agency of fermentation? This agency is an essential condition of fermentation, at least of its taking place with a certain promptitude. Further, there is no fermentation without air; this being also excluded by my method, we have two assignable causes for its success; the theory of which appears to flow naturally from the means practically employed.

Indeed, if we refer to any of the methods made use of and any of the experiments and observations of ancient and modern times, upon the preservation of alimentary substances, with which we are acquainted, we shall find that fire is every where the principal agent, either in the natural duration, or in the artificial preservation of vegetable and animal substances.

Fabroni has proved that heat applied to grape juice or must, destroys the fermentation of this vegeto-animal, which is pre-eminently leaven. Thenard has made like experiments on cherries, gooseberries, and other fruits. The experiments of the late Vilaris, and of Mr. CazalÈs, learned chymists at Bourdeaux, who have dried meat by means of stoves, equally prove that the application of heat destroys the agents of putrefaction.

Drying, boiling, evaporating, as well as the caustic and savoury substances which are employed in the preservation of alimentary productions, all serve to shew that caloric in its various modes of application, produces the same effects.

[T] These poËtes et littÉrateurs amiables qui chantent pour s’amuser, are M. de Berchoux, author of the charming poem la Gastronomie, and the authors of the Almanac des Gourmands, an annual publication written with infinite wit and humour, and which enjoys a higher reputation, and more extensive popularity, than any other work of taste published in France, since the revolution. For an account of both these productions the reader is referred to the Literary Panorama, Vol. VII. pp. 661, and 719. The Almanac of Gluttons, if it be not the standard of poetic genius in imperial France, is at least an indication of the direction which talent is now taking: a direction, which the laws and literary police of the Napoleon government will not fail effectually to maintain. T.