Abstract
REMOVAL of water and exclusion of air are amongst the most effective conditions for the preservation of animal and vegetable foods. If you coat an egg with collodion you may keep it a year, and yet will find it perfectly sound at the last. By dipping a mutton-chop in melted paraffin, putrefaction will be prevented. But in both these examples of preservative processes, dependent upon the exclusion of air, you make use of materials which are costly and uneatable. There are analogous drawbacks to all similar plans for preventing injurious changes in articles of food. The tinning method, and the method of simple desiccation in warm dry air, are satisfactory in their results; but the range of alimentary substances amenable to such treatment is not very extensive. In Dr. Campbell Morfit's new “Gelatin Process” we seem to see several points of superiority over most of the older plans for attaining the same end. It is true that chemists have not been in the habit of looking upon gelatin (or indeed any other similar complex nitrogenous body) as likely to prevent or arrest decay. On the contrary, few solutions afford a more suitable nidus for the development of fungoid germs than a liquid containing gelatin. But the experience of a good many months tends to show that food-preparations containing gelatin, if once dried so as not to contain more than 10 or 12 per cent, of moisture, do not become mouldy even when exposed to warm and moist air. A large number of Dr. Morfit's experimental mixtures have been so exposed for some weeks, lying on my office table: yet they have not suffered any decided deterioration. They comprise many perishable foods, such as cabbage, tomato, milk, and meat. Though not of equal merit as specimens of the gelatin process, all are edible, and some positively palatable. Further experiment will doubtless enable the inventor to improve his process by modifying it still further, so as to suit a greater variety of vegetable and animal foods.
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CHURCH, A. Gelatin as a Food-Preserver . Nature 18, 546 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/018546a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/018546a0