The rise of alternative bread leavening technologies in the nineteenth century

ABSTRACT

This article reveals how nineteenth-century chemists and health reformers tried to eradicate the use of yeast in bread, claiming they had devised healthier and more sanitary ways to raise bread. It describes the alternative technological solutions to baking bread, investigating factors that influenced their development and adaptation in the marketplace. A lack of scientific and cultural consensus surrounding yeast, what it was and what it did, fermented during this period. The conflict over yeast helped create a heterogeneous industrialization of the baking industry, changing processes and ingredients and creating new forms of bakery products. By examining the claims of promoters of rival scientific beliefs and technologies, as well as those of users and social commentators, we can see that technology’s eventual adaptation and impact on society is not predictable at its outset. Exploring the relationship between differing scientific beliefs, cultural understandings and alternative technologies also shows how science and industry cannot be isolated from their social and cultural context. The examination of the nineteenth-century technological development of commonplace commodities such as bread, baking powder and yeast, also reveals and explores a story that has not been told before in the history of science and technology. Why it has not been told is as enlightening as the story itself, revealing as it does our own privileging of what is important in science and history.

ORCID

Carolyn Ann Cobbold http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1609-6927

Notes

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28 My research of the London patent office shows eight baking powder patent applications, five for yeast and one composite baking powder/yeast application between 1869-1876 with equal numbers later in the century.

29 S. Graham, A Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making (Boston: Light and Stearns, 1837), p. 81.

30 Nissenbaum, Sex, Diet, and Debility; H. Schwartz, Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies and Fat (New York : London: Free Press ; Collier Macmillan, 1986).

31 Graham, A Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making, p. 86.

32 J. Kirkland, The Modern Baker Confectioner and Caterer (London: London Gresham Publishing Co, 1907); Graham, A Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making, 81.

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34 S. Chapman, Jesse Boots of Boots the Chemist (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974); A. Desmond, The Politics of Evolution, Morphology, Medicine & Reform in Radical London (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1892); C. Lawrence, 'Degeneration under the Microscope at the Fin de Siècle', Annals of Science, 66(4) (2009), 455–71; J. Money, The Destroying Angel: Sex, Fitness & Food in the Legacy of Degeneracy Theory, Graham Crackers, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes & American Health History (Prometheus Books, 1985); R. Olson, Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008); Schwartz, Never Satisfied; J. C. Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers (Princeton University Press, 2014).

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38 Baking powder advertisements can be found in many back copies of Victorian newspapers and periodicals, for a few examples see Advertisement, Golden Hours, December 1875, 800; Advertisement, Myra’s Journal, 7 (July 1, 1898), 9.

39 Advertisement, July 1, 1898.

40 R. Mason, The Food Makers, a History of General Foods Ltd.; M. Redclift, Chewing Gum in the United States and Mexico (California: Sociologia Ruralis, 2002).

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42 Eben Norton Horsford Papers, Folson Library, Rennelaer Polytechnic Institute, US; Brock, Justus Von Liebig, 238--41; P. Jones, 'Liebig, Horsford and Baking Powder', Ambix, 40 (1993), 65–74; S. Rezneck, 'The European Education of an American Chemist and Its Influence in Nineteenth Century America: Eben Norton Horsford', Technology and Culture, 11(3) (July 1970), 366–88.

43 E. Horsford, The Theory and Art of Bread-Making: A New Process without the Use of Ferment (Cambridge, MA: Welch, Bigelow & Co., 1861).

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 P. Jones, 'Liebig, Horsford and Baking Powder'; Liebig Letters, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munchen and Sondersammlungen Deutsches Museum, Munchen

47 Ibid.

48 P. Jones, 'Liebig, Horsford and Baking Powder'.; Horsford Letters, RPI Archives.

49 Anon, The British Medical Journal, 2(194) (September 15, 1860), 727–28.

50 P. Jones , 'Liebig, Horsford and Baking Powder'; J. Kirkland, The Modern Baker Confectioner and Caterer.

51 P.Gélinas, ‘Mapping early patents on baker’s yeast manufacture’, Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 9(5) (2010), 483--97; R. Weir, ‘Science, marketing and foreign competition in the yeast trade, 1860-1918’, Business History, 33(4) (1991), 43--67.

52 C. Richardson, 'The Foundations of Bakery Education in the Late Nineteenth Century', Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 24(57) (1979), 29–35; E. David, English Bread and Yeast Cookery (London: Penguin, 1977).

53 N. Humble, Cake, a Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2010).

54 G. Shaw, L. Hill Curth and A. Alexander, 'Creating New Spaces of Food Consumption', in Cultures of Selling, ed. by J. Benson and L. Ugolini (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), 81–100.

55 C. Petersen , Bread and the British Economy (Hants: Scholar Press, 1995); London Metropolitan Archives, Aerated Bread Company Minutes, ACC/2910, London Metropolitan Archives.

56 Petersen, Bread.

57 S. Thrupp , A Short History of the Worshipful Company of Bakers (London: Galleon Press, 1933).

58 J. Burnett, 'The Baking Industry in the 19th Century', Business History, 5(2) (June 1963), 98–108; R. McCance and E. Widdowson, Breads, White and Brown: Their Place in Thought and Social History (London: Pitman Medical Publishing, 1956).

59 Financial Times, 1988 (21 June, 1; 2 August, 4; 18 October, 2; 19 December, 4); 1989 (23 January, 4; 2 February, 4; 20 February, 2; 6 March, 4; 25 March, 3); 1990 (25 April, 4); 1892 (13 December, 2); 1893 (1 November, 4); 1894 (25 October, 4); 1910 (18 February, 4).

60 J. Dauglish, 1856 Patent. Making Bread. No. 2293 (Oct 1). British Library Patent Department; J. Dauglish, 1857. Patent. Preparation of Dough. No 2224. (Aug 21). British Library Patent Department; J. Dauglish, 1864. Patent. Manufacture of Aerated Bread. No. 677 (Mar 16). British Library Patent Department; G. Shaw, L. Hill Curth and A. Alexander, 'Creating New Spaces of Food Consumption'; R. Leon, 'The Rise and Fall of the Aerated Bread Company', Camden History Review, 25 (2001), 47–50; A. Rosling Bennett, London and Londoners in the 1850s and 1860s (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1924).

61 B. Richardson, On the Healthy Manufacture of Bread; a Memoir on the System of Dr Dauglish (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1884). www.oxforddnb.com

62 Anon, The Morning Chronicle, no. 28380 (December 7, 1857); Anon, Liverpool Mercury, no. 3075 (December 18, 1857); Anon, Manchester Times, no. 4 (January 2, 1858); Anon, Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, January 30, 1858; Anon, September 15, 1860.

63 A. Wynter, Our Social Bees or Pictures of Town and Country Life (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1885), chapter 16.

64 B. Richardson, On the Healthy Manufacture of Bread; a Memoir on the System of Dr Dauglish.

65 Anon, Leisure Hour, no. 436 (May 3, 1860), 285.

66 Anon, 'Our Daily Bread', Commercial Bulletin, January 6, 1866; Anon, 'The Battle of the Bakers', Dublin University Magazine, October 1872.

67 Aerated Bread Company Minutes, ACC/2910, London Metropolitan Archives, London; J Childs, Manufacture of Bread and Biscuits, British Library Patent Department 3540, 7 December 1869.

68 Shaw, 2006; Leon, 2001; Rosling Bennett, 1924

69 A. Stanziani, 'Negotiating Innovation in a Market Economy: Foodstuffs and Beverages Adulteration in Nineteenth-Century France', Enterprise and Society, 8(2) (2007), 375–412.

70 E. Horsford, The Theory and Art of Bread-Making: A New Process without the Use of Ferment.

71 Anon, Caledonian Mercury, no. 21295 (December 26, 1857).

72 Boston Wheat & Bread Co, Improved Aerated Bread (Boston: Boston Wheat & Bread Co, 1866).

73 Anon, Boston Daily Advertiser, January 3, 1866.

74 US Patent Office, Letters Patent No. 33342 (Oct 8, 1861) and No. 40707 (Nov 24, 1863).

75 S. Bacon, Improved Apparatus for Generating Carbonic Acid Gas, United States Patent Office 61596, 29 January 1867.

76 Anon, 'The Gold Miners of the Frozen North', The Pall Mall Magazine, 23 (93) (January 1901), 55.

77 Anon, 'Wit and Humour', Reynold’s Miscellany of Romance, General Literature, Science and Art, 42 (1091) (1869), 335.

78 Punch, November 17, 1860 cited in Humble, Cake, a Global History.

79 R. Blackmore, 'Christowell', Good Words, 22 (December, 1881), 721.

80 L. Pasteur and A. Melville, Improvements in the Manufacture and Preservatio of Beer andin the Treatment of Yeast and Wort, British Library Patent Department 1106, 25 March 1873.

81 J. Bernal, Science and Industry in the Nineteenth Century, 81--82.

82 E. Horsford, Report on Vienna Bread (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1875).

83 P. Kleiger, The Fleishmann Yeast Family (San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2004).

84 Ibid.

85 R. Bud, The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology, 20--21.

86 C. Richardson, 'The Foundations of Bakery Education in the Late Nineteenth Century'.

87 Ibid.; W. Jago, The Technology of Bread Making (Liverpool: The Northern Publishing Co., 1886).

88 J. Blandy, The Bakers’ Guide (London: Newton & Eskell, 1889).

89 J. Marx and J. Litchfield, eds., A Revolution in Biotechnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); L. Young and S. Cauvain, Technology of Breadmaking (Berlin: Springer, 2007); National Association of Master Bakers, The Master Baker’s Book of Breadmaking (Ware, Hertfordshire: National Association of Master Bakers, 1996), pp. 145,147,169.

90 T.P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (JHU Press, 1993); P. Kraft and P. Kroes, 'Adaptation of Scientific Knowledge to an Intellectual Environment', Centaurus, 27 (1) (1984), 74–99.