The object of this book is to exhibit the chemical principles of the art of making good and wholesome wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, potato bread, or other bread that uses farinaceous substances in different parts of the world. The writer, who has a chemistry background, uses his knowledge to provide the information needed to make bread through various carbohydrates. One of the chapters in this book focuses on the chemical analysis of bread flour, its immediate constituent parts, their proportions in different kinds of grain, and the method of separating them.
Reproduction of the original. The publishing house Megali specialises in reproducing historical works in large print to make reading easier for people with impaired vision.
The book is a treatise that shows the superior process of manufacturing coal gas employed in the metropolis and the provincial towns of Great Britain in the 19th century and lay before the reader the elevations, sections, and plans of the improved Gas Light machinery, which has stood the test of practice, and is now in action at the most celebrated Gas Light Establishments.
In this book the author explores the various meanings assigned to goods sold retail from 1550 to 1820 and how their labels were understood. The first half of the book focuses on these labels and on mercantile language more broadly; how it was used in trade and how lexicographers and others approached what, for them, were new vocabularies. In the second half, the author turns to the goods themselves, and their relationships with terms such as ’luxury’, ’choice’ and ’love’; terms that were used as descriptors in marketing goods. The language of objects is a subject of ongoing interest and the study of consumables opens up new ways of looking at the everyday language of the early modern period as well as the experiences of trade and consumption for both merchant and consumer.
Bad food has a history. Swindled tells it. Through a fascinating mixture of cultural and scientific history, food politics, and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many ways swindlers have cheapened, falsified, and even poisoned our food throughout history. In the hands of people and corporations who have prized profits above the health of consumers, food and drink have been tampered with in often horrifying ways--padded, diluted, contaminated, substituted, mislabeled, misnamed, or otherwise faked. Swindled gives a panoramic view of this history, from the leaded wine of the ancient Romans to today's food frauds--such as fake organics and the scandal of Chinese babies being fed bogus milk powder. Wilson pays special attention to nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and England and their roles in developing both industrial-scale food adulteration and the scientific ability to combat it. As Swindled reveals, modern science has both helped and hindered food fraudsters--increasing the sophistication of scams but also the means to detect them. The big breakthrough came in Victorian England when a scientist first put food under the microscope and found that much of what was sold as "genuine coffee" was anything but--and that you couldn't buy pure mustard in all of London. Arguing that industrialization, laissez-faire politics, and globalization have all hurt the quality of food, but also that food swindlers have always been helped by consumer ignorance, Swindled ultimately calls for both governments and individuals to be more vigilant. In fact, Wilson suggests, one of our best protections is simply to reeducate ourselves about the joys of food and cooking.
