COTTONSEED, Flour, Meal, Oil

Cottonseed comes from the gin with short soft lint still adhering to the shells. Its general commercial treatment produces from each hundred pounds, about 46 pounds of lint and shells, 36 pounds of oil cake or "cake" and 16 pounds of crude oil. The lint is marketed as cotton batting, etc., the shells are used as fuel and fertilizer, the oil-cake as fertilizer and cattle-feed, and the oil for edible purposes, soap manufacture, machinery uses, etc.

The seed, when freed from the down, somewhat resembles a small coffee-bean in size and form.

Cottonseed flour, or (whole) meal. The ground whole cottonseed has in recent years attracted attention as a valuable food material. The decorticated seed contains an average of 10% water, 19% protein, 20% fat, 24% carbohydrates, 22% fibre and 5% ash. It is too rich to be suitable for use as a substitute for wheat flour in bread, for example, but it may be advantageously employed in combination with it or other flour.

Cottonseed Oil, when thoroughly refined for edible purposes, serves as an excellent and inexpensive substitute for olive oil in cooking. It is also largely used as a salad oil, for packing sardines and other products, etc. "Choice" oil is of a light lemon color and mild and neutral in flavor. "Prime" oil is slightly darker in color and is sweet in flavor but without any seedy taste. Cottonseed Stearin, used in the manufacture of cottolene, compound lard, etc., is obtained by separation from the refined oil. The lower grades of oil and the residue separated in refining, employed for mechanical purposes, soap manufacture, etc., are reddish or brownish and unpleasant in flavor.

The value of the oil obtainable from the average American cotton crop is estimated at nearly one hundred million dollars, yet less than a hundred years ago the bulk of the seed was treated as a waste article and considered troublesome because of the difficulty of disposing of it. The real importance of the present extensive industry commenced with the still more recent date of 1855, when improved methods of decorticating the seeds were invented. Part of the seed has always been employed as a fertilizer, but even the full exploitation of its oil possibilities would not interfere with this use, as experience warrants the belief that the cotton-meal residue, after the extraction of the oil, is nearly or quite as valuable for fertilizing purposes as the whole seed.