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in wine sauce', 'with lemon juice', etc., are continually used in a sense which is out of all proportion
either to their flavour or other value. Samples of caviar style salmon roe and hors d'oeuvres
in jelly, received as complaints, were on the contrary quite fit for consumption.
An egg and tomato sandwich possessed a strong cheesey odour and taste, but no cheese as such
was detected in the sandwich. The odour and taste were probably caused by the use of a knife,
heavily contaminated with a cheese of the Gorgonzola type, being employed in spreading the fat in
the sandwich, or in slicing the egg.
A slice of white bread, submitted wrth a large number of other pieces of bread, contained a piece
of mouse dirt.
Some biscuits, described as 'Butter Sandwich Biscuit Wafers,' contained 2.6 per cent, of fat on the
whole biscuit, and the butter fat was less than 1.3 per cent. It was questioned whether they
should be described as flour confectionery or as sugar confectionery. If sold as sugar confectionery
they must contain at least 4 per cent, of butter fat, but if the sellers wished to claim that they were
flour confectionery they contained insufficient fat to warrant the description Butter Sandwich
Biscuit Wafers. Several samples of fruit biscuits were examined and the percentage of fruit found
ranged from 1.44 per cent, to 51 per cent. Fruit biscuits containing less than 8 per cent, of fruit
were reported as inferior.
The pastry of some blackcurrant tarts had an objectionable soapy flavour, but the extracted fat
and the extracted pastry on drying possessed quite a pleasant flavour. The free fatty acids were
not excessive, and the flavour might have been due to the slight acidity of the fat used in the pastry
reacting with an alkaline baking powder. Such an occurrence could not have been foreseen by the
baker although the consequences were most unpleasant.
Some Ryvita biscuits were submitted with the allegation that they contained a piece of plastic
material but no further plastic could be found in the biscuits. Your analyst was of the opinion that
the piece of plastic submitted had not been cooked in the biscuits, and thought it more likely that
it had been in some butter or other substance which was adherent to the biscuit when it entered the
mouth.
A complaint was received about foreign matter in a Christmas pudding. This consisted of a
piece of shale and was probably a contaminant of one of the fruits, no doubt the currants or sultanas,
used in making the pudding.
A sarnph of lemon juice possessed a dirty brown colour and contained a precipitate. No microbiological
growth had taken place but the Vitamin C had been destroyed and it was thought that the
juice must be old stock.
Some salad herbs contained a snail shell, and more woody stalk fibre than should have been
present. If the herbs were to be sprinkled on the salad half an hour before consumption, as directed,
there would still be the sharp stalks present, which would be very unpleasant for anybody wearing
dentures. Thay were reported as inferior.
The flower of a portion of cooked cauliflower had a bluish tinge, but the amount of colour was so
minute that it was impossible to isolate it, and it was thought that as cauliflowers belong to the
brassica family the formation of the colour might be due to throwback.
Although a lemon curd was vacuum packed it possessed an unpleasant odour and taste due to the
oxidation of the lemon oil. The extracted fat gave a positive Kreis reaction for rarcidity and
contained 1.93 per cent, of free fatty acids calculated as oleic acid.
A sample of marzipan was stated to be prepared from 60 per cent. of sugar and 40 per cent. of
almonds, whereas it contained 51.5 per cent. of sugar, 37 per cent. of almonds, and 11.5 per cent.
of water and was therefore 14 per cent. deficient in sugar and 7.5 per cent, deficient in ground
almonds.
A sample of canned sweet corn was received with the complaint that it had caused sickness.
The lead was less than 2, and the arsenic less than 4 parts per million and the condition of the lacquer
was extremely good, so that no cause for sickness could be found.
A complaint regarding the taste of a syphon of soda water was found to be justified. The soda
water was badly contaminated with smoke and whilst the quantities of various smoke constituents
were too small to be identified and determined they made the water objectionable and unfit for
drinking purposes. Another complaint was received regarding a bottle of whisky. It appeared
that the contents had been emptied out and the bottle refilled with water, but the bottle was in fact
a sales dummy, which had been filled with water, and should not have been sold.