492 ON OUR OIL FLASKS. 



from below, leaving the oil, which is known as l'huile d'enfer, or Lamp 

 Oil. Another yield called l'huile fermente, is oil got from olives in a 

 state of fermentation ; hut this is rarely employed, and the oil is never 

 met with in trade. Only the virgin oil and the ordinary'oil are sent 

 abroad; l'huile d'enfer and the horrible fermented stuff are mercifully 

 kept at home. 



Though Spain has such magnificent fruit — the Spanish olives are 

 much larger thau the French — she makes but inferior oil, owing to the 

 rudeness and poverty of her machinery, whereby the olives ferment 

 before they can be crushed, and thus the oil is never quite sweet or 

 pure, and soon turns violently rancid, which is the reason why that 

 terrible smell and taste of bad oil, mingled with the smell and taste of 

 garlic, destroys every meal cooked in Spain ; while in Italy you have 

 oil cookery without any of these disagreeable results. Italian oil is 

 certainly first-rate, though the machinery employed is not much 

 superior to the Spanish. As for the Gallipoli oil, the manufacture of 

 that is of the rudest and simplest description. The Neapolitan women and 

 children pick up the ripe fruit as it falls from the tree, fling the olives 

 into a mill and crush them up body and bones, skin and kernel 

 together ; whence streams forth an oil, according to the law of olive 

 nature. They ladle this oil into skins — sheep, goat, kid, bullock, any- 

 thing handy — and send it to the seaport of Gallipoli, to be clarified in 

 the huge cisterns cut in the rock on which the town is built ; and to be 

 finally shipped off to England and elsewhere, under the name of 

 Gallipoli oil ; but by no means to be attempted for food, for frying fish, 

 or for summer salads. 



Almond oil is got by squeezing bitter ainionds, which are cheaper 

 than, and as good as, the sweet, between cold metal plates. This is the 

 first quality ; the second is got by pressing them again between heated 

 metal plates, the heat acting as a further power of expression ; and the 

 result of both processes is a sweet-tasted and inodorous oil. When an 

 almond scented oil is needed, then the almonds are first blanched in hot 

 water, and carefully dried again previous to being pressed ; by which 

 process the oil retains the odorous particles, and is the " oil of bitter 

 almonds" we all know of. If we want the essential oil of almonds, 

 which is quite another thing, the marc or bitter-almond cake left by the 

 first process — the almonds with all the bland oil expressed — is distilled 

 with water, and the essential oil passes up with the steam and condenses 

 in the worm. Cocoa-nut oil is obtained by heat, pressure, and water, 

 all together. It soon turns rancid, and is principally used here for 

 candles and soap ; but employ what perfumes we will in the latter, the 

 horrible smell of the cocoa-nut oil survives and overpowers everything, 

 and when the rose and the almond and the lavender and the patchouli 

 have all vanished from our hands, cocoa-nut oil remains. The Indians 

 and Cinghalese use this oil largely as a pomade, but we cannot do so, 

 unless we become indifferent to evil smells as a national characteristic. 



