Home › Food Products Of Commerce › Pea

Pea

The varieties of beans are innumerable, the sorts in greatest request for their green pods being colored, while those used for their dried seeds, as food, being the white varieties. The pea, (navy) bean, the marrow bean, and the Lima bean, are carried to all parts of the civilized world, and are considered indispensable to armies, navies and mariners generally. They are both exceedingly rich in flesh-forming material, as starch, gum and gluten, and deficient in oil. VII. Potatoes and Their Products.

POTATOES are now almost exclusively used as human food. Formerly, large quantities of starch were made from them, and they were much used for distillation into spirits. Alcohol and starch are now made principally from corn. The average yearly production of potatoes in the United States in the past eleven years, was 135,491,019 bushels, the largest yield in one year being 181,626,400 bushels, and the smallest, 105,981,000 bushels.

WILD POTATO OF NEW MEXICO. (Salanum Fendliri.) New York is the great potato-growing State, giving 20,000,000 bushels annually; next comes Pennsylvania with about 9,000,000 bushels. Then come Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, California and Ohio, the productions in these States being from more than 3,000,000 bushels annually, to over 7,000,000.

A true wild potato (Salanum Fendliri), supposed to be the original of the cultivated potato, has lately been found growing in abundance in the northern part of New Mexico, between Wingate and Fort Defiance. The tubers are half to three-quarters of an inch in diameter, and when boiled are esculent. They are eagerly sought by the squaws. If eaten in large quantities they produce griping, and hence the Navaho Indians eat magnesian earth with their meal of wild potatoes. The illustration shows the plant and tubers.

VIII. Sago and Tapioca.

Sago is a starchy farina, prepared from the pith of various palm trees. The arrow-root of Florida is a variety of sago prepared from indigenous plants, Zamia integrifolia and Z. pumila. Tapioca is prepared from a tropical plant, grown principally in Brazil-Jatropa manihot There are two varieties. The acridity of the roots is destroyed by roasting and washing. Good substitutes are prepared from the starch of corn.

IX. Chocolate and Cocoa.

BOTH of these are preparations of the nuts of the chocolate tree (Theobroma cocoa), the first from the meat, and the second from the cotyledons or nibs. The West Indies, Mexico, Central America and Brazil are the principal producing countries. The tree is inter-tropical, and there are several species. The beverage is nourishing, but does not possess the refreshing qualities of tea and coffee.

How Chocolate is Made. - In the regions where chocolate is cultivated, the ripe nuts are gathered and exported; or when manufactured at home, the fruits are split open, and the nuts (seeds) removed. The latter are then cleaned of the pulpy matter surrounding them, and subjected to a process of fermentation, for the purpose of developing their color, and when this process is completed they are dried in the sun and packed for transpor- Marx باعة