Pulverized bones, chalk, and fuller’s earth: Regency food additives.

Ever wondered what else might be in Regency foods?

While the Board of Excise would prosecute persons selling adulterated foods, the sorts of things that Regency profiteers put in the foods they produced ranged from dirts to acids to wood pulp or bone,

Those who altered food or drink did so for a number of reasons:
* to pass off one substance for another (as in the case of items that weren’t tea or coffee but were sold as such);
* to make a weak or unappealing product stronger (as in the case of alcohols) or more attractive; or
* to extend the quantity of the foodstuff that the maker was able to produce.

According to the May 1818 New Annual Register the following foods were especially liable to adulteration:

* Porter and ale, it has been frequently proved, have been mixed with drugs of the most pernicious quality.
* Port wine, as it is called, and especially that sold at very low prices, it is known, has been manufactured from sloe-juice, British brandy, and logwood.
* Gin, in order that it might have the grip, or have the appearance of being particularly strong, is known to be adulterated with a decoction of long pepper, or a small quantity of aquafortis.
* Bread, from public convictions, is known to have been made of a mixture of flour, ground stone, chalk, and pulverized bones.
* Milk to have been adulterated with whitening and water.
* Sugar to have been mixed with sand,
* Pepper with fuller’s earth, and other earths.
* Mustard with cheap pungent seeds.
* Tobacco with various common British herbs. (46)

I've added * to make the items in the quotation easier to see.

The article also offers a method for testing whether one’s tea is real or an imitation.
“Lay the tea on wetted paper, and rub it; it will easily discharge the color it receives from logwood, Dutch pink, or verdegris [sic]" (46).

Here’s more information on some of them.

Aquafortis: A corrosive used to etch engraving plates, aquafortis (or strong water) was the common name of a diluted nitrous acid. Aqua fortis is the condensation of the gas created when one heats a combination of alum and vitriol with either sand or saltpeter.

Dutch Pink: This one is a bit harder to track down. Several plants appear to have been used to make ‘dutch pink.’ The OED points to the low-growing white or pink flowers of the Dianthus (family Caryophyllaceae). According to G. Fields’ 1835 Chromatography, “Dutch Pink, English, and Italian Pinks, are sufficiently absurd names of yellow colors prepared by dyeing, whitening, &c. with vegetal yellow tinctures, in the manner of rose pink, from which they borrow their name.” However A Pratt’s 1861 Flowering Plants and Ferns of Great Britain identifies the plant as the Reseda Luteola —commonly known as dyer’s weed, weld, woold, etc.

Fuller’s earth: From the sixteenth century at least, Fuller’s earth referred to a clay formed by a ‘hydrous silicate of alumina’ (OED). Because it was absorbent, Fuller’s earth would remove impurities, such as lanolin, from the wool after it was processed. Today fuller’s earth is used to clean marble, to fill litter boxes, to create better special effects, etc.

Logwood: According to Andrew Duncan’s 1803 The Edinburgh New Dispensatory, logwood “was introduced from the Honduras into Jamaica, where it is now very common. The wood is firm, heavy, and of a dark red colour. Its taste is astringent, with a perceptible degree of sweetness. It is principally used as a dye-wood, but also with considerable advantage in medicine. Its extract is a very powerful astringent, combined with mucilage, and perhaps sugar; and thus, therefore, useful in obstinate diarrhoeas, and in chronic dystentery” (231). Logwood was also called blockwood or bloodwood.

Long-pepper: Piper Longum, today called the Indian Long Pepper, or pippali, is used in ayurvedic medicine. Again from Duncan’s The Edinburgh New Dispensatory, “The plant which bears the long pepper is also a farmentaceous climber. The berries are small round grains, disposed spirally in a long cylindrical head. They are gathered before they are ripe and dried, and are the hottest of all the peppers. The warmth and pungency of these spices reside entirely in a resin; their aromatic odor in an essential oil. In medicine they are sometimes employed as acrid stimulants; but their chief use is in cookery as condiments” (281).

Sloe-juice: The juice made from the fruit of the Sloe-tree (Prunus Spinosa), which grew wild in Britain. According to Duncan's The Edinburgh New Dispensatory, “The fruit has a very astringent sourish taste. It contains malic acid. The inspissated [thickened] juice of the unripe fruit is very astringent, and is called Acacia Germanica. An infusion of a handful of the flowers is a safe and easy purge. The powdered bark will sometimes cure agues.” (287-88)

Verdigris: The greenish blue rust that appears on the surface of copper or brass when it oxidizes, verdigris was used as a pigment, both in dyeing and in painting. It could be artificially created by applying a diluted acetic acid onto copper.

Yum.