402 SPICES 



CHAP. 



roots and earth, is divided into small lots in baskets and 

 plunged in the water, where it stays ten or fifteen minutes. 

 It is then spread out on a platform to dry. During the 

 process the water is occasionally changed (Kew Bulletin). 

 ^According to Kilmer, however, scalding the ginger is 

 Vfiot practised to any extent in Jamaica. The effect of 

 this treatment is to swell the starch and bassorine-like 

 gums. He found that by treating the ginger with 

 boiling water for an hour the rhizomes are considerably 

 swollen, and the water was filled with the aroma of 

 ginger. Under the treatment with boiling water the 

 skin comes off easily, but if the action is continued the 

 starch and fibre are acted on, and the rhizomes dry 

 hard and become darker in colour. 



In Khandesh, India, the rhizomes are at first partly 

 boiled in a wide-mouthed vessel, then after drying a 

 few days in the shade they are steeped in weak lime- 

 water, sun dried, and steeped in stronger lime-water, 

 and then buried for fermentation. When the fermenta- 

 tion is over, the ginger, now called South, is ready for 

 market. 



In some of the Indian bazaar ginger the rhizomes are 

 roughly washed and then smeared with cow-dung and 

 hung up in baskets, or placed on trays, among the rafters, 

 where the smoke of the house cures it. This bazaar 

 ginger is shrivelled, dirty, and most uninviting looking, 

 and is very apt to be destroyed by the boring beetle. 

 A writer in the Pharmaceutical Journal suggests that 

 the ginger should be brushed first with a hard brush 

 till every earthy particle is removed, and steeped for a 

 night in a pretty strong solution of lime-water (1 ounce 

 of unslacked lime to the gallon), then well rinsed in 

 clean water and dried slowly in a brick oven at a 

 temperature of 140 to 160. Ginger prepared thus 

 in one of the Sylhet plantations fetched nearly as high 

 a price as the best Jamaica ginger. 



In the Punjab, Baden-Powell says that the rhizomes 

 are dried by placing them in a basket suspended by a 

 rope, and shaking it for two hours a day for three days. 



