THE MANUFACTURE OF TOMATO PRODUCTS TEXT

purposes. The catsup packer should not be expected to make catsup which will keep in perfect condition in restaurants where absolutely no care or intelligence is used in handling it. This class of restaurant proprietor is fortunately in a decided minority, but rather than make a catsup that will be so strongly acid that it will stand up under his treatment, he should be educated to use a little care in the handling of the catsup. The following is a common abuse in restaurants. We will say, for example, that three catsup bottles are on the tables containing from a half inch to two inches of catsup. The waitress does not like to put a bottle which is almost empty before a customer, so she pours the contents of two of the three bottles into the other one. The catsup in these bottles may be a week old. When the contents of the bottle containing this mixture are almost gone she pours the rest of it into another partly filled bottle and so on, so that some of the bottles may contain catsup which is over a month old, and in a warm, poorly ventilated restaurant it is apt to start fermenting. The proprietor should be educated to the fact that when using a non-preservative catsup he must not pour it from one bottle to another, but must leave it in the original container until almost gone, and then use the balance for making tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, and for flavoring soups, gravies, etc. One advantage the packer using benzoate of soda has over the non-preservative packer is that he can make his catsup so that it will keep properly and at the same time maintain the natural tomato flavor to a high degree. The tomato flavor is maintained because it is not largely masked by the use of a lot of vinegar and sugar. The packer using benzoate rarely uses more than a third as much vinegar or half as much sugar as the non-preservative packer. Many non-preservative catsup makers who read this will think a total acidity of 1.25% is higher than necessary. They will say to themselves that the acidity on their catsup never runs over 1%, and they have never had any complaints. It may be that they do not have a very big restaurant trade where so many of the fermentation complaints come from, or that they do not have a very wide distribution of their product so that it is subjected to all sorts of climatic conditions, or it may be that they are having a case of fermentation now and then in households but never hear about it. In that case the housewife usually merely drops that brand and buys another one next time. But where a restaurant or hotel is having fermentation trouble, the manufacturer is sure to hear about it quick. It is wise to allow a fair margin of safety, and my experience is that a total acidity of 1.25% is not too high. Quite a few catsup packers maintain an acidity between 1.50% and 1.75%, and one large concern has for years kept the acidity of their catsup around 2%. This, however, seems unnecessarily high. Acidity will be discussed further in the next chapter. Processing Catsups Non-preservative catsups should either be processed after filling and sealing, or the bottles should be sterilized before filling and the catsup filled very hot without giving an after-sterilization. Catsups made with the addition of benzoate of soda are not processed; however, the fact that benzoate is used should not cause laxness at any stage in the manufacturing process. It is a mistake for manufacturers to think that ⅒th of 1% of benzoate of soda will keep their product in perfect condition regardless of how careless they are in their manufacturing processes. Advantage of Benzoate Catsups Some brands of benzoate catsup enjoy a very good sale, and are popular with those who do not like a strongly acid and sugary catsup, but prefer one which is mild and in which the predominating flavor is one of tomato blended with mild spicing. A restaurant using a catsup or chili sauce of this character will almost always use more of it than they will of a strongly acid catsup which is highly spiced. If the catsup is mild, more of it is usually used at a time. Causes of Poor Color and Flavor The chief objections to most of the catsups on the market are a lack of bright red color, and a more or less scorched taste. This may be due to a number of causes. The brownish color may be due to underripe tomatoes, or to tomatoes which were picked during a spell of cold, dark weather. It takes sunshine to give tomatoes a brilliant color, and when there is an absence of sunshine for a week or ten days many of the tomatoes will rot before they attain a bright red color. At such times during the season it is impossible to get a brilliant color, but if the packer will exercise as much control as he is able to over the picking, persuading the farmers to hold their tomatoes back just as long as possible, he will not have a great deal of such goods and he can get a fair color out of what he does get, out of these dull colored tomatoes. He should be careful not to mix brownish tinted catsup with the brilliant red goods. If he will keep similar shades of catsup in the same shipment he is not nearly as apt to have complaints as he will have if he mixes different colors. It is even more important that all the bottles in one case should be very nearly alike. A grocer who receives a case of catsup all of which is very slightly off in color will usually not complain unless it is decidedly off. If, however, off colored bottles are mixed in the same case with bottles of a brilliant red color, the poor colored goods suffer greatly by comparison, and then there is apt to be a complaint. The other causes of poor colored catsup are scorching at some stage in the manufacturing process and too much cooking. By too much cooking is not only meant too long a cook at one time, but also too much cooking in the aggregate. For example, a packer receives tomatoes of good color and he cooks them into pulp, which requires a cook of thirty minutes. He packs the pulp in No. 10 cans and sterilizes it about forty minutes, and he has a good colored pulp, as it has only received two short cookings. He stores this pulp for several months, and then makes it into catsup. It is reheated, which is hard on the color, as heat applied to cold pulp for five minutes to bring it to a boil seems to hurt the color as much as a half hour added on to the cook after the pulp is hot. After reheating, it is cooked into catsup, which requires about thirty minutes, and after being bottled it is sterilized at a high temperature for about an hour, which makes the fourth cooking those tomatoes get. This is what is meant by too much cooking in the aggregate. Too long a cook at one time will, of course, also darken the product. Scorching is more frequent with catsup made from pulp than with that made from fresh tomatoes. Much of the catsup made from pulp, although not actually scorched, has a very faint scorched flavor to it. It is hard indeed to make catsup from pulp which tastes like the goods which is bottled from freshly run tomatoes. It falls behind in both color and flavor. One finds that color and flavor are very closely associated in catsup. A bright red catsup is practically always a fine flavored product, while a dull colored catsup with a brownish cast to it very frequently has a more or less unpleasant taste with the suggestion of being somewhat scorched. Advantage of Direct Conversion of Tomatoes Into Catsup Many catsup makers are doing away with winter packing almost altogether. They bottle at least 90% of their catsup direct from fresh tomatoes. Half of the remaining 10% is made from 50% fresh tomatoes and 50% pulp, the pulp being added about ten minutes before the cooking is completed. This fresh tomato and pulp mixture makes a much better flavored product than one can expect to get from straight pulp. Pulp can always be used in combination with fresh tomatoes at the beginning and at the close of the season when the tomato receipts are light. Catsup made direct from tomatoes is not only of superior quality, but it can be manufactured at least 20c a dozen cheaper for the pint size than catsup made from canned pulp. In many cases the difference will run more than that. Packers who put up a general line of tomato products will do well to reserve their fresh tomatoes for catsup, and to use their pulp for bean sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato soup, etc., all of which can be made better from pulp than one can make catsup from pulp. Thickness The thickness of catsups found on the market is fairly uniform, and there is rarely a cause for complaint on this score. When catsup is packed in cans, the thicker it is the better the buyer likes it as a rule; however with bottled goods excessive thickness is not a virtue but a cause of much annoyance to the consumer. It is better to have it just a shade too thin than too thick. Spicing and Sweetness Improper spicing of catsups is not a common fault either. Even where essential oils are used exclusively for spicing, a real good flavor can be had if the oils are properly administered. As to sweetness, many catsup makers are coming to the conclusion that the public is demanding a slightly sweeter catsup than was generally packed eight or ten years ago. There is very little doubt but what a composite sample from a half dozen prominent brands of today, if compared with a composite sample taken from the same brands ten years ago, would show quite an increase in sweetness. One of the largest selling brands on the market has a distinct sweetish taste, and the public, at least a large percentage of it, seems to like it. There are still many who like a tart or slightly sour taste, but the tendency is unquestionably in the other direction. “Black Neck” A rather common defect in bottled catsup is what is commonly called “black neck,” which is a darkened space in the neck of the bottle, all the way from a half inch to over two inches in depth. Several years ago I made a very thorough investigation of the causes of black necked catsup, and every thing seems to point to the fact that in nine cases out of ten it comes from leakage of air into the closure of the bottle. The space between the surface of the catsup and the top of the bottle should be a vacuum if the seal is perfect, as this space is left by the contraction of the catsup in the bottle when it cools. Many closures, no matter what style, do not seem to be entirely impervious to air, and the catsup gradually darkens as the air is gradually admitted. A suggestion for overcoming “black neck” will be given later under the head of “stacking catsup.” General Attractiveness The general attractiveness of the package is, of course, important. A cheap, unvarnished label which quickly becomes dirty looking, and a cheap tin cap which gets black and filthy looking on the inside after the catsup has been open a few days, do not enhance the sale of a product, and only make a very slight reduction in the manufacturing cost. The packer should by all means use either a re-tinned cap or an inside enameled cap. Ordinary plain tin caps should be absolutely barred, as they are entirely unfit for a bottled condiment which contains as much acid as catsup. Although the remarks in this chapter have been confined to catsup, it should be understood that they apply equally to chili sauce, which only differs from catsup in that it is made from peeled instead of strained tomatoes, and is usually a little bit more spicy. CHAPTER IX A DISCUSSION OF THE INGREDIENTS OF CATSUP; WHEN AND HOW THEY SHOULD BE ADDED; AND THE AMOUNTS OF EACH PER 100 GALLONS OF FINISHED CATSUP Practically all of this chapter will be devoted to non-preservative catsup. The use of benzoate of soda and the changes in the formula which its use involves will be briefly discussed at the end of the chapter. Measuring the Volume of Tomato Juice When catsup is being manufactured direct from tomatoes the tomatoes should be previously cycloned, either by the cold or hot process. I have never cooked catsup direct from crushed tomatoes, as it is evident that crushed stock is open to at least two objections. The first is that the finishing point would be rather hard to gauge accurately, due to the presence of so many peelings, and the second is that when the peelings and seeds are screened out by the finishing machine they would no doubt carry some of the ingredients with them, chiefly sugar, which would be a waste. If the tomato juice is delivered to the catsup cooking kettle from a “breaking tank,” as it is in the hot pulping method, the volume of tomatoes to be used per batch of catsup is measured on the “breaking tank,” and the cycloned juice is delivered from this tank to the catsup cooking kettle as the condensation gradually allows more and more of it to be taken care of. If the cold pulping process is used some other method of measuring the tomatoes for each batch must be used. One way is to have the catsup cooking kettle built high enough so that it can hold the entire volume of cycloned juice required for the batch without boiling over when the steam is turned on. The juice is then pumped over to a certain measure on the kettle before the cooking is begun. This requires very high cooking tanks. Another way is to take over as much juice as the kettle will hold and concentrate it, and then shut off the steam and take over another measured volume according to a gauge on the inside of the tank which reaches from top to bottom, and is marked off in gallons. If this method is used the cooking kettles need not be so high. Another way is to use a meter on the pipe line between the cyclone and the cooking kettles, which will register, within twenty-five gallons, the volume of tomato juice being pumped over. It is, of course, an advantage to start the cooking as soon as the coil or jacket is covered, so as to kill growing micro-organisms as quickly as possible, and it is also an advantage to keep the contents of the kettle vigorously boiling from the time the coil or jacket is covered with the fresh juice until the batch of catsup is finished. None of the ingredients should be added until all of the tomato juice for the batch is in the kettle, with the exception of the bag of spices. It is usually not considered advisable to cook batches of catsup of over 300 gallons when finished. I have cooked as much as 400 gallons at a time, but it requires quite a long cook to complete the condensation unless the tank has a large surface for evaporation and a coil with a very large cooking capacity, and a high steam pressure is available. Amount of Tomatoes In discussing the proper amounts of the various ingredients to use, a batch of finished catsup of 100 gallons in volume, when measured hot, will be taken as the basis throughout this chapter. The amount of tomatoes required to make 100 gallons of finished catsup varies according to the season of the year and the quality of the stock. If the tomatoes are watery, or contain so much rot that 25% or more must be cut away, that of course makes a big difference. If, on the other hand, the tomatoes are large and meaty, and contain scarcely any rot, a comparatively small amount of them are required. Taking tomatoes of average size, containing an average amount of solid matter, and from which 10% by weight of rotten material is sorted out, it is safe to figure on 37 bushels of tomatoes or 59⅝th bushel baskets for 100 gallons of finished catsup. Keeping Batches Uniform If the catsup batches are to be kept uniform in size throughout the season, as they should be, the quantity of tomatoes per batch will have to be changed slightly from time to time according to the amount of water they contain. The only safe way is to put a gauge on each cooking tank which marks the desired volume of catsup when cooked, and to vary the volume of tomato juice per batch to the extent which is indicated by the gauge. If the batches are running two inches low, the cook will know by a little experimenting just how much extra juice will be required per batch to make it right. Having all the batches come out exactly the same in size is important, both in preservative and non-preservative goods. In the former, the percentage of preservative cannot, of course, be kept uniform unless the batches are kept uniform in size. In non-preservative goods it is advisable to keep the percentage of acetic acid—that ingredient upon which the keeping quality chiefly depends—as nearly uniform as possible. Of course, if a batch runs large, the acetic acid percentage will be low, while if the batch runs small, the acetic acid percentage will be higher than necessary. The spicing will also be more uniform if the batches are uniform in size. Use of Spices in a Sack Where the spices are put in a sack, the sack is usually tied to the coil, if this type of cooking tank is being used, and where a jacketed kettle is used, there being no place to tie the sack, it is usually just thrown on top of the boiling tomato juice and allowed to float around near the surface during the boiling. One concern uses a long pole which is suspended from overhead and reaches to within a foot of the bottom of the jacketed kettle. The sack is tied to this pole, and it is thus held down during the boiling. As to whether any flavor is actually lost by allowing the spice bag to float near the surface is a question. This could easily be determined by an analysis of the spice residue. Use of Spices Direct and When to Add Them As far as I know, whole spices are always used when the spices are placed in a sack, and when they are thrown into the catsup direct, ground spice is used. It is claimed by some that the latter method gives just as good results as the former, and that no advantage is to be gained by the use of sacks. As to whether or not this is true I cannot say, as I have never used ground spices in catsup with the exception of pepper, ginger and paprika. The reason for using sacks, of course, is to allow the flavor of the spice to be extracted without having the spices come in direct contact with the catsup. If you will macerate some ground allspice or cloves in dilute acetic acid for a while, you will notice the black substance which is extracted, and it is surely reasonable to suppose that at least some of this will be extracted in catsup when the ground spices are thrown in direct. As for the cassia, there probably would be no objection to the use of the spice direct. The flavor of mace is lost by continued boiling, and the use of it in a sack which stays in the boiling liquid for thirty minutes or longer is a waste of the mace. If mace is boiled long in direct contact with the catsup it imparts a very bitter taste. The proper way to add mace is to throw it in direct in the broken form about three minutes before the batch is done. Ginger should be added at the same time as mace, as its volatile oil passes off very rapidly, and if cooked long it will practically all be lost by volatilization. As to the pepper and paprika, they are added direct in the ground form at the beginning of the cooking. Mustard is also said to be used in catsup, but it apparently isn’t used extensively. Use of Spices in Two Batches If the whole spices are placed in a sack it is a good idea to cook each sack of spices in two batches. In this way more of the flavor is extracted than would be taken out by one boiling. This can be proven by cooking a batch of catsup with no spice other than a sack of spices