[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Saviour's].

  • St. Saviour's District (London, England). Board of Works.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Saviour's]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: City of London, London Metropolitan Archives

    18/36 (page 18)
    18 Butters are certainly not good, regarded in the light of produc tions from milk. Of 17 samples, more than one-half were not altogether genuine; 6 were spurious, and 3 partly so. Where the melting point is very high, the so-called butter consists of animal fat of the character of tallow and lard; where it is very low, we have butterine. One feature of the imitation butters is their compara tive dryness; they contain little water, and are very free from taste. Instead of the 12 to 15 per cent, of water which we find in good butters, we have only from 5 to 6 per cent. No. 21, which was sold as butter, was almost tasteless. It was perfectly clean, and was unobjectionable as a mere fat for cooking purposes. Indeed it was superior to the genuine article, No. 35. One very usual feature of a spurious butter is the cleanness, which exhibits careful manipulation. I would sum up my experience of sham butters in the last quarter of the past year in the following words: dry, clean, tasteless and inodorous fats, perfectly wholesome if they can be relished, and a fair commercial article if sold cheaply as an imitation. Two Lards have been examined and approved. They have been tested both chemically and microscopically, and the results were quite satisfactory. Six Breads and three Flours next claim attention. At the present time the character of Bread is only second to that of milk. To what extent the nutritive quality of flour is reduced, by the removal of the husk and bran, we learn by comparing the three Flours which have been analysed. The percentage of nitrogen in English Super Whites amounted to l.32, or 1J parts per hundred of the flour. This is equal to 8.36 per cent, of gluten. The percentage of nitrogen in Hungarian Flour was equal to 1.14 parts; that of gluten to 7.21 parts per hundred. But in Whole Meal Flour the percentage of nitrogen was 1.7 parts per hundred, which is equal to 10.76 parts per hundred of gluten. Taken by them selves, these facts would be conclusive as to the greater value of the whole-meal flour for making bread. But we cannot thus easily decide. The coarseness of whole-meal flour creates a difficulty in making good bread. It is very retentive of water, and the resulting article