1874 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

A Minneapolis flour mill opened by C. C. Washburn employs fluted chilled steel rollers in addition to conventional millstones (see 1866). Washburn has made a fortune in Wisconsin land speculation and served as governor of Wisconsin (see 1879; Pillsbury, 1878; Gold Medal Flour, 1880).

New technology improves food canning—a drop press introduced by Allen Taylor and a pressure-cooking "retort" either by A. K. Shriver or Baltimore canner Isaac Solomon (see 1861). Live steam keeps the outside walls of the can under pressures comparable to those exerted by the heating contents of the can, thus speeding up the cooking of the contents without permitting the can to buckle or burst as it cools because of any buildup in pressure during the heating process. The retort gives canners accurate control of cooling temperatures and will lead to a large-scale expansion of the industry (see Howe floater, 1876).

Margarine is introduced into the United States (see 1881).

Condensed milk pioneer Gail Borden dies at Borden, Texas (named for him), January 11 at age 72. He campaigned in recent years for sanitary dairying practices, and his son John Gail continues that effort, devoting his time to educating dairy farmers in how to produce better—and cleaner—milk (see 1866; 1875). Borden has selected a gravesite in New York's Woodlawn Cemetery and his tombstone is engraved with the words, "I tried and failed, I tried again and again and succeeded."

Several dozen milk companies open in Japan, and cows' milk begins to gain some popularity among the Japanese (see Townsend Harris, 1856).

Bovril has its beginnings in Johnston's Fluid Beef, produced commercially at Sherbrooke, Quebec, by former Edinburgh butcher John Lawson Johnston, 38, who by some accounts has won a contract from the French government to supply canned meat for stocking forts against the kind of emergency that produced starvation 3 years ago in the Franco-Prussian War. His product gains quick popularity, and production will be moved in 1880 to Montreal (see Britain, 1886).

The ice cream soda is invented at the 50th anniversary celebration of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute. Robert N. Green demonstrates a soda fountain, possibly using the invention of James W. Tufts's Arctic Soda Water device, which spurts out seven varieties of beverages and 16 different kinds of syrups. When he runs out of cream after making $6 per day selling a mixture of syrup, sweet cream, and carbonated water, he substitutes vanilla ice cream and by the time the exhibition ends is averaging more than $600 per day.

Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company is incorporated at Milwaukee with a capitalization of $200,000 (see 1856). Schlitz himself will drown next year at age 44 on a voyage to his native Germany, but his four nephews—Alfred, August, Henry, and Edward Uihlein—will keep management of the company in family hands for more than a century.

The first brut champagne is created by Mme. Pommery of the Pommery Champagne house at Reims, who produces an extremely dry sparkling wine.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is founded at Cleveland, where 135 women meet November 18 at the Second Presbyterian Church and dedicate themselves to ending the traffic in liquor (see National Prohibition Party, 1869). Bands of women have appeared in cities throughout the year to sing and pray in the street and in saloons against the "evil" of drink, Northwestern University dean Frances Willard, now 35, has joined one such group at Pittsburgh and delivered her first public prayer kneeling on the sawdust-covered floor of a Market Street saloon (see Anti-Saloon League, 1895).