The arrow-root powder is mixed up with a small quantity of cold skimmed milk into a perfect, smooth, uniform mixture; more milk is then added, and the whole boiled for a few minutes, to effect the solution of the arrow-root: this compound, when perfectly cold, is mixed up with the cream. From 220 to 260 grains, (or three large tea-spoonfuls) of arrow root are added to one pint of milk; and one part of this solution is mixed with three of cream. It is scarcely necessary to state that this sophistication is innocuous.
The fraud may be detected by adding to a tea-spoonful of the sophisticated cream a few drops of a solution of iodine in spirit of wine, which instantly produces with it a dark blue colour. Genuine cream acquires, by the addition of this test, a faint yellow tinge.
In the preparation of sugar plums, comfits, and other kinds of confectionery, especially those sweetmeats of inferior quality, frequently exposed to sale in the open streets, for the allurement of children, the grossest abuses are committed. The white comfits, called sugar pease, are chiefly composed of a mixture of sugar, starch, and Cornish clay (a species of very white pipe-clay;) and the red sugar drops are usually coloured with the inferior kind of vermilion. The pigment is generally adulterated with red lead. Other kinds of sweetmeats are sometimes rendered poisonous by being coloured with preparations of copper. The following account of Mr. Miles[110] may be advanced in proof of this statement.
"Some time ago, while residing in the house of a confectioner, I noticed the colouring of the green fancy sweetmeats being done by dissolving sap-green in brandy. Now sap-green itself, as prepared from the juice of the buckthorn berries, is no doubt a harmless substance; but the manufacturers of this colour have for many years past produced various tints, some extremely bright, which there can be no doubt are effected by adding preparations of copper.
"The sweetmeats which accompany these lines you will find exhibit vestiges of being contaminated with copper.--The practice of colouring these articles of confectionery should, therefore, be banished: the proprietors of which are not aware of the deleterious quality of the substances employed by them."
