Important: Safety Warning
This page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes.
This page describes additives or treatments for food or drink that are now known to be toxic and are prohibited in food today.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › Brandy, Whiskey and Imitation Spirits › Preparation of Rum Ether
Preparation of Rum Ether
terated with one half of something else, it is quite evident that he will not be following our instructions, and as a consequence will be unsuccessful in the object sought for Birch Oil.
The birch is a native of both America and Europe, when the bark is distilled, it yields an oil having the peculiar odor of Russia leather, in the preparation of which it is employed. The American species of birch called sweet birch, is remarkable for the aromatic flavor of the bark and leaves, and an oil obtained from the bark has been proven to be identical with oil of Wintergreen. Use as directed in the recipes.
Rum Essence.
Rum owes its flavor to a volatile oil or ether and butyric acid; a fact which the chemist has availed himself of in the manufacture of a butyric compound for the purpose of enabling the dealer to manufacture an imitation rum from plain spirit, this is called rum essence. Rum essence is sometimes used to flavor brandy, it is very frequently adulterated, and the manufacturer should therefore be careful and procure it from a respectable wholesale druggist. Use as directed elsewhere. Preparation of Rum Ether.
Take of black oxide of manganese, of sulphuric acid, each twelve pounds; of alcohol, twenty-six pounds; of strong acetic acid, ten pounds. Mix and distill twelve pints. The ether, as above prepared, is an article of commerce in Austria, being the body to which rum owes its peculiar flavor. The above composition may be employed with success; it is a valuable recipe, and was given by a German chemist of great ability.
This is not a kitchen procedure at all but a nineteenth-century chemical manufacture, and it cannot be carried out safely or legally in a home. The points below explain what the process actually is and where it fails.
- What the reaction isBlack oxide of manganese is manganese dioxide, a strong oxidiser. Combined with twelve pounds of concentrated sulphuric acid and twenty-six pounds of alcohol, it drives a strongly exothermic oxidation, and at this scale the heat generated can easily outrun the capacity of an improvised vessel to vent. Runaway boil-over of hot concentrated acid is a real risk.
- Concentrated sulphuric acidTwelve pounds of oil of vitriol is a bulk industrial quantity. It causes severe burns on contact and mixes with alcohol exothermically; the text gives no order of addition, and order of addition matters a great deal to whether the reaction stays controlled.
- Distillation of flammable vapourThe product is drawn off as vapour from a boiling alcohol-acid mixture; the text specifies no apparatus, heat source or condenser. Ether and alcohol vapours are heavier than air, travel along a bench and can flash from any ignition source in the room. Distilling also requires a licence in most jurisdictions regardless of purpose.
- The distillate is not a defined substance"Rum ether" here is a crude mixed fraction, principally ethyl acetate with unspecified aldehydes, ethers and carry-over acid. Nothing in the procedure separates or assays it, so there is no way to know what is in the twelve pints collected.
- Manganese carry-overManganese compounds and residual sulphate can pass into the receiver with an uncontrolled distillation. A flavouring intended to be added to drinking spirit at trace levels has no margin for contamination of that kind.
- The wider chapterThe surrounding entries on birch oil and "rum essence" are flavouring entries from the compounding trade, of which building imitation spirits from neutral alcohol plus a purchased flavour concentrate was one branch. Modern food-grade ethyl acetate and rum extracts exist and are bought, not made; if you want a flavouring, use a current commercial product.
Rum ether, sometimes sold as rum essence, was a nineteenth-century staple of the imitation-spirit business, and the text names Austria as a source of supply. Chemists of the period held that rum's distinctive character owed much to esters and to butyric acid, and on that understanding a dealer with a barrel of plain grain spirit could attempt to approximate a Jamaica rum without ever seeing sugar cane. Books like this one were written for exactly that dealer: the aim is not cooking but a trade manual for compounding, colouring and "improving" liquor at a time when labelling laws were minimal and adulteration was assumed on all sides — note that the author's chief worry about buying rum essence is not toxicity but that the essence itself will have been cut. Food and drug legislation in the following decades, in Britain, the United States and Europe alike, gradually pushed this whole genre of recipe out of legitimate commerce and into the historical record.