1897 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

Joseph Campbell Preserve Company chemist John T. Dorrance, 24, develops his idea of a double-strength "condensed" soup that will give Campbell's Soup dominance in the industry. A nephew of company president Arthur Dorrance, John is an MIT graduate with a doctorate from the University of Göttingen, has worked at some famous Paris restaurants to study the proper flavoring of soup, has passed up faculty positions at Göttingen, Columbia, Cornell, and Bryn Mawr, and persuades his uncle to hire him as a research chemist. He receives $7.50 per week and within the year has succeeded in producing condensed soup in four varieties: Beefsteak Tomato, Consommé, Chicken, and Oxtail (see 1898).

The introduction of double seams and improved crimping of body and ends makes tin cans more reliable (see 1876; 1895; aluminum, 1960).

American Sugar Refining makes a deal with Claus Spreckels in San Francisco to eliminate competition (see 1891; 1899).

Purina breakfast cereal is introduced by the 3-year-old St. Louis livestock food company Robinson-Danforth which names its product Purina to signify purity (see Ralston, 1902).

Grape Nuts is introduced as a health food by C. W. Post of 1895 Postum fame, who will claim that his ready-to-eat cold cereal (a mixture of whole wheat, malted barley flour, salt and yeast, baked in the form of bread sticks, shredded, baked again, very slowly, and then ground up) prevents appendicitis, helps cure tuberculosis and malaria, and makes loose teeth tighter. Post believes that grape sugar (dextrose) is formed during the repetitive baking process, recommends that his cereal be sprinkled on salad at dinner as well as being consumed at breakfast and lunch (he also recommends deep breathing, exercise, and drinking lots of water) and includes a copy of his pamphlet The Road to Wellville with each brown and tan box (see Post Toasties, 1904).

J. M. Smucker Company has its beginnings at Orrville, Ohio, south of Cleveland, where local farmer Jerome M. Smucker, 39, makes apple butter in a copper kettle over a wood fire, puts it up in stoneware crocks, and has his wife peddle it to Wayne County housewives from the tailgate of wagon. His descendants will acquire other firms, building an enterprise that will be the largest U.S. producer of jams, jellies, and preserves.

Jell-O is created at Le Roy, New York, near Rochester, by cough-syrup manufacturer Pearl B. Wait, whose wife, May, gives the product its name (see Knox, 1890). Wait has acquired the patent obtained by Peter Cooper in 1845; his fruit-flavored powdered gelatin is made from a recipe adapted from one developed by Cooper (the powder is 88 percent sugar; see Woodward, 1899).

Hobart Electric Manufacturing Company is incorporated July 21 at Troy, Ohio (it will be reincorporated as Hobart Manufacturing in 1903) with Herbert Lincoln Johnston, 28, as designer, pattern maker, and test engineer. In 2 years he will invent the world's first electric coffee mill for store use, and he will invent an electric meat chopper in 1911 (see mixing machine, 1918; everyday life [KitchenAid dishwasher], 1949).

The Bottled-in-Bond Act signed into law by President William McKinley requires that whiskey be aged in charred white-oak barrels for at least 4 years in government-bonded rack warehouses and bottled at 100 proof (50 percent alcohol) under government supervision to prevent the kinds of abuses revealed in last year's congressional hearings (see definition of bourbon, 1964).

Tennessee distiller Jack Daniel begins bottling his whiskey in square bottles to distinguish it from other brands (see 1866). Now 48, the five-foot-two-inch promoter has petitioned the state legislature to let him call his product Tennessee whiskey rather than bourbon (see 1904).

H. P. Hood at Boston begins distributing milk in glass bottles instead of ladling it from large cans into customers' pitchers (see 1890; Brooklyn, 1879; Borden, 1885). Hood stables more than 1,200 horses, his routemen must harness their horses and load their wagons before driving to the often distant points at which their rounds begin, and they must start work shortly after midnight in order to commence deliveries at 4 o'clock in the morning.

Welch's Grape juice production moves to Westfield, New York (see 1896). Charles Welch processes 300 tons of grapes at Westfield, a stronghold of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in the heart of the 90-mile Chautauqua and Erie grape belt along the southeastern shore of Lake Erie.

Britons begin to eat lunch, dooming the classic British breakfast that still often includes kippers (smoked herring, split open and fried in butter), finnan haddie (smoked haddock, often from the Scottish fishing port of Findhorn), kedgeree (rice mixed with fish, usually salmon, and hard-boiled egg—a dish introduced from colonial India), roast beef, kidneys, bacon, sausages, porridge, snipe (Scotland), scones (Scotland), cold toast, butter, marmalade, treacle, eggs, and tea with milk.