22 



SAMUEL RAE & CO. 



LEGHORN, TUSCANY. 



Glass can communicate no bad taste to 

 it, but tin and wood are both liable to 

 do so. in course of time. 



Sedlment in Bottles. 



Occasionally, new olive oil, when 

 bottled early in the season, although 

 most carefully filtered, will deposit a 

 little sediment in bottles. The sedi- 

 ment merely consists of very minute 

 particles of the fruit ; though not pleas- 

 ing to the eye, it ought to be generally 

 known that this sediment has no im- 

 portance whatever, and proves abso- 

 lutely nothing against either the purity 

 or the excellence of the oil in question. 



Effects of Cold. 



Fine olive oil under the influence 

 of cold loses its brightness and turns 

 cloudy ; often, though it continues to be 

 fluid, flakes aretobeseen floating about, 

 the appearance of which in bottled oil 

 has sometimes given rise to unfounded 

 suspicions. The effect of a low tem- 

 perature is to separate, temporarily, 

 some of the constituent parts of olive 

 oil ; hence the flakes. But this natural 

 phenomenon is of no moment what- 

 ever ; on warming the contents of a 

 bottle in which these flakes are visible, 

 it will be remarked that they disappear 

 and that the oil resumes its brightness. 



Adulteration. 



Great scope for adulteration is offered 

 in the number of cheap vegetable oils 

 which can be profitably employed for 

 the purpose, such as cotton-seed, 

 ground-nut, sesame, and colza oils. Of 

 these, cotton-seed and ground-nut oils 

 are probably more generally used, and 



in Italy, cotton-seed oil. To check the 

 practice, a customs duty of 14 lire per 

 100 kilograms was imposed in Italy on 

 this oil. 



Adulteration is not by any means 

 confined to Italy. Seed oils of various 

 kinds are largely imported as well as 

 made in France. There are factories at 

 Marseilles and Bordeaux where oil is 

 extracted from African ground-nuts, 

 arachidcs, of which there is an enor- 

 mous importation. Not only is this oil 

 used to adulterate olive oil, but it is said 

 to be used, to some extent, as a sub- 

 stitute for it, in packing cheap brands 

 of sardines. 



In the United States it is a fact that 

 olive oil, imported in casks, is there 

 mixed with cotton-seed oil and retailed 

 as pure olive. 



Adulteration of butter has been al- 

 ready dealt with by Congress, and in 

 course of time it is hoped that every- 

 where the adulteration of articles of food 

 will be put down. Even in Turkey 

 action has been taken, as the following 

 extract shows : 



Adulterated Olive Oil. — The Secretary of 

 State has received a dispatch from Mr. Pendleton 

 King, charge d'affaires ad interim of this gov- 

 ernment at Constantinople, of December 14, 

 1 886, saying that the Sublime Porte had decided, 

 on the recommendation of the Council of State, 

 in order to prevent the sale of adulterated olive 

 oil, which is sold to the detriment of the public 

 health, to have that commodity examined by 

 inspectors appointed from the Imperial Faculty 

 of Medicine, and by municipal agents, and to 

 confiscate the oils v^hich are mixed with cotton 

 oil or with any other pernicious substance. 



One fact, however, which must be 

 especially noted, is that adulteration is 

 confined to low qualities of olive oil. 



It will not pay to adulterate fine olive 

 oil, for the quality would be irretrieva- 

 bly ruined, and it would then sell only 



