Leigh Hunt’s London Journal/Volume 2/26 September 1835/Table Talk

TABLE TALK.

FINE SIMILE.

The husband smiled in delight upon his wife; and when she had retired and left the friends together, it seemed to Arthur that the star of evening was quenched, and Wilmot could not refrain from talking of her for an hour. Shifting fancies and wild emotions had all been assimilated by his love and wedlock, into a steady and integral portion of his nature; as the vague sand-bank, weltering at the will of gales and waters, and on which nothing of more stable reality can rest, than some bright storm-vision, may be fixed into a cape of solid earth, supported by rocks of coral, and covered with gardens and forests, peopled with the creatures of paradise.—Arthur Coningsby.

PICKLING OF MEAT.

Professor Rafiensque denounces the use of saltpetre in brine, intended for the preservation of flesh to be kept for food. That part of the saltpetre which is absorbed by the meat, he says, is nitric acid, or aquafortis—a deadly poison. Animal flesh, previous to the addition of pickle, consists of gelatinous and fibrous substances, the former only possessing a nutricious virtue. This gelatin is destroyed by the chymical action of salt and saltpetre; and, as the professor remarks, the meat becomes as different a substance from what it should be, as leather is from the raw hide before it is subjected to the process of tanning. He ascribed to the pernicious effects of the chymical change, all the diseases which are common to mariners and others, who subsist principally on salted meat, such as scurvy, sore gums, decayed teeth, ulcers, &c., and advises a total abandonment of the use of saltpetre in the making of pickle for beef, pork, &c.; the best substitute for which, he says, is sugar, a small quantity rendering the meat sweeter, more wholesome, and equally as durable. This statement ought to be made known to all, and recommended to farmers, butchers, packers of sea provisions, and all the people who, owing to their residence from towns and villages, or from other causes, are in the habit of curing their own meat.