1892 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

Asa Candler incorporates the Coca-Cola Company at Atlanta January 25 (see 1891). He budgets $11,401 for advertising and broadens distribution of the beverage, whose name will be registered with the U.S. Patent Office in January of next year (see 1895).

Baltimore machine-shop foreman William Painter, 54, patents a clamp-on tin-plated steel bottle cap with an inner seal disk of natural cork and a flanged edge; he also patents a capping machine for beer and soft drink bottles. The new bottle cap will replace the unsanitary and labor intensive Miller Plunger patented in 1874 and the 1878 Hutchinson Bottle Stopper, both widely used, and mass production of soft drinks and beer. Painter will design an automatic filler and capper with a capacity of 60 to 100 bottles per minute and establish Crown Cork and Seal at Baltimore to market his bottle caps and machines (see 1910; everyday life [Gillette], 1895).

Fabrique de Produits Maggi introduces bouillon concentrate in granulated form (see 1890). The concentrate will be marketed in bouillon cubes beginning in 1906.

Campari aperitif is introduced by Italian entrepreneur Davide Campari, whose father, Gaspare, opened a café at Milan in 1867. The younger Campari acquires a factory at Sesto Giovanni to produce the aperitif after having studied the distilling art in France.

American Sugar Refining controls 98 percent of the U.S. sugar industry (see 1891); H. O. Havemeyer's Sugar Trust uses political influence to suppress foreign competition with tariff walls, and the company saves itself millions of dollars per year in duties by having its raw sugar imports shortweighted (see Spreckels, 1897).

The first Hawaiian pineapple cannery opens (see 1790). English-born horticulturist Captain John Kidwell arrived at Honolulu in 1880 and has built the cannery after a decade of patient, scientific efforts to develop quality pineapples and grow them commercially in the Manoa Valley of Honolulu, where previously the plants have been torn up as an agricultural nuisance. After failing in an effort to grow the Kona variety, Captain Kidwell imported 1,000 crowns of the smooth Cayenne variety with a view to supplying the market for fresh fruit in San Francisco but found, like others before him, that pineapples do not travel well. He processes the fruit of 1,000 plants in partnership with John Emmeleuth but finds the high U.S. tariffs on canned fruits an impossible obstacle and the partners will ship only a few thousand cases before finally giving up (see Dole, 1902).

George A. Hormel Company is founded by Austin, Minnesota, butcher-meat packer George Albert Hormel, 31 (who pronounces his name with emphasis on the first syllable). He converted an abandoned creamery on the Cedar River into an abbatoir last year, slaughters 610 hogs by year's end, and will personally split 100,000 carcasses before letting anyone else do the job as he builds a business in ham, bacon, sausage, and fresh pork (see 1926).

The hamburger sandwich is invented by some accounts at Akron, Ohio, by Akron County Fair concessionaire Frank Menches, 27, who has nearly run out of sausage. He grinds up the meat he has left and serves it as a meat patty.

H. J. Heinz adopts "57 Varieties" as an advertising slogan (the firm produces well over that number of products) (see 1888). While riding on a New York elevated train, Henry J. Heinz has seen a card advertising 21 shoe styles and adapts the idea (see baked beans, 1905).

Fig Newtons are introduced by the 87-year-old Kennedy Biscuit Works of the 2-year-old New York Biscuit Company. Kennedy bakery manager James Hazen has been persuaded to try out a new machine to make preserve-filled cookies invented by James Henry Mitchell of Philadelphia; he calls the cookies "Newtons," having named a series of earlier cookies "Beacon Hill," "Brighton," and "Melrose" (like Newton, all are names of Boston suburbs). Since fig is the preserve most often used to fill the cookies, those made by other New York Biscuit bakeries to fill a rising demand will be Fig Newtons (see National Biscuit Co., 1898).

Caramel maker Milton S. Hershey visits England and finds that his biggest customer there is cutting up slabs of imported Hershey caramel into bite-sized pieces and dipping them in chocolate (see 1891). The "Caramel King," as he will soon be called, suspects that caramels may be a passing fad, whereas chocolate is food. He uses chocolate to flavor some of his caramels and becomes interested in the manufacture of chocolate (see 1893).

Homogenized milk has its beginnings in patents granted to French inventor Paul Marix for the manufacture of margarine. Marix has forced a liquid mixture through a small hole to obtain an emulsion; he is granted his third patent April 4 for a complex system in which emulsification is obtained by centrifugally forcing a liquid mixture against a fixed surface by means of a turbine (see Gaulin, 1899).

New York Condensed Milk Company adds evaporated milk to its Borden product line (see 1885; Meyenberg, 1885).