More about safe food in the 19th century
I’ve been thinking about how much effort most of us put into buying food that’s safe to eat. We get instructed on how to store meat (on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, well-wrapped) and to check use-by dates on package food from the supermarket.
I’ve spoken before about the lack of food standards in the English speaking world in the nineteenth century, and how quite a few books of household advice said things like “Don’t buy pickles – make them. Bought pickles can have dangerous chemicals to turn them green.” There’s a ton of information out there on bad food practices, in fact.
It wasn’t just the writers of cookbooks and household guides who tried to address the issue. There is legislation of interesting sorts, and one day I might hunt some up to show you. There was verbal advice given to servants and anyone intending to run a household. There was patent medicine to solve the illnesses caused by food that may well have had similar components to the patent medicine.
And there were advertisements. Manufacturers and producers had a rather big stake in convincing potential consumers that “Those foods raddled with evil stuff, we don’t produce them. We’re on the side of the angels and what we produce will not kill you. Promise. Cross our hearts and hope to die. Cross our hearts and hope you won’t die, too.”
This is one of those advertisements, from an 1891 British vegetarian cookbook.
“For Puddings, Blanc−Mange, Custards, CHILDREN’S AND INVALIDS’
DIET, And all the Uses of Arrowroot,
BROWN & POLSON’S CORN FLOUR
HAS A WORLD−WIDE REPUTATION, AND IS DISTINGUISHED
FOR UNIFORMLY SUPERIOR QUALITY.
NOTE.−−Purchasers should insist on being supplied with BROWN &
POLSON’S CORN FLOUR. Inferior qualities, asserting fictitious claims,
are being offered.”
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