Olive oil

“ As a cosmetic, nothing equals olive oil. The beauty of Spanish and Italian women is owing largely to their daily and liberal use of it in salads and cooked foods. It improves the complexion and rounds out the lines of the form.
Eating salad is by far the most agreeable way to take olive oil. There are persons with whom all acids disagree; these unfortunates have to do without the fragrant vinegar; but they can easily learn to like salads with oil and salt alone. The taste is decidedly worth acquiring.
In making the dressing, oil should by all means be applied "by a spendthrift." ”

“ It seems unnecessary to dwell on the great importance of the olive oil for table use. In the culinary point of view, it was of the very first necessity among the ancients, where oil cooking was predominant, and where it entered into all the seasonings most generally employed. ”

“ The small olive of Syria is considered the most delicate, and Italian olives also are very fine; those of Spain are larger and coarser. The best olive-oil comes from the south-eastern portion of France and is a clear, pure liquid; it is obtained from the first pressing of the fruit. This must be only a gentle squeeze, to get the purest oil: the quality usually sold is made by a heavier pressure; and then, when the olives are worked over again, come the dregs, which are not fit for table-use."
"Do they mash 'em, like making apples into cider?" asked Malcolm. ”

“ But if you wish to enjoy the epicurean delights of true salads you must train your sense of smell and learn to distinguish between fragrant oil and cottonseed oil, which, at its worst, has a disagreeable flavor and at its best is practically odorless and tasteless.
It is the fragrance, the Flavor, of olive oil that keeps it in the market, boldly defying its cheap rivals.
A great many Americans who think they do not like olive oil know not what real olive oil is. They have been fooled by the adulterators. ”

“ OLIVE OIL AND SARDINES.
Col. Newnham-Davis declares that "really good pure olive oil is almost unknown outside the boundaries of Italy. An Italian gentleman never eats salad when traveling in foreign countries, for his palate, used to the finest oils, revolts against the liquid fit only for the lubrication of machinery he so often is offered in Germany, England, and France."
This is somewhat misleading. While inferior or adulterated olive oil is certainly served in many otherwise respectable European restaurants, even in Paris, I have eaten delicious olive oil made in France. ”

“ A simple and homely test for the detection of adulteration is the heating of oil until it smokes, in some small vessel. The smell of olive oil while suggestive of the kitchen and cookery is not at all disagreeable, while any counterfeit oil, and especially cotton seed oil, is exceedingly offensive to the nostrils. If placed in a refrigerator, pure olive oil will remain unchanged, or at most throw down a little palmatin, while adulterated oil will thicken and congeal. The persistent adulteration of olive oil will bear its legitimate fruit ”

“ The fruit is mild, or sharp, or bitter; and the oils differ likewise; so that a pure olive-oil may be unfit for purposes of food, and only fit for greasing machinery and making soap. The green, unripe olives, having had the bitter taste extracted with salt, are preserved in vinegar with spices. The ripe olives are gathered in the fall, when they are as large as common plums. They are of dark-green color, and the pit, now become a hard stone, contains a savory kernel. The flesh is spongy, and its little cells are filled with the mild oil, which runs out at the least pressure. ”

“ Do not buy it of a grocer who exposes his bottles in the show window. If he does not know that sunlight spoils the best olive oil, he is not likely to know, or care, what the best oil is.
Among the adulterants used to cheapen olive oil small quantities of castor oil, lard oil, fish oil, and even petroleum have been found. More frequent are rapeseed and poppy-seed oil. Peanut oil is much used, but the most frequent adulterant is cottonseed oil, which costs only about one-fifth the price of high-grade olive [229] oil and therefore offers great temptation to the dealer. ”

“ For symbolical reasons olive oil is prescribed for the lamp burning before the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, for it is a symbol of purity, peace, and godliness. Since pure olive oil, without any admixture, causes some inconvenience in the average American climate, oil containing between 60 and 65 per cent of pure olive oil is supposed to be legitimate material. Where olive oil cannot be had, it is allowed, at the discretion of the ordinary, to use other, and as far as possible vegetable, oils (Cong. Sac. Rit., 9 July, 1864) . ”

“ The superiority is purely a question of Flavor, for all olive and other table oils have the same food value.
Many factors combine to make Lucca and other Italian olive oils so pleasing to the palate. The soil is specially adapted to the cultivation of the olive tree, and care has been taken to select the best varieties. The old Roman epicures, who gathered their delicacies from all parts of the world, already preferred Italian olive oil, especially that of the variety known as the Licinian and grown in Campania.
No less important than soil and variety is the proper harvesting of the crop. ”

“ He says, in his lesson on agriculture, "Olive oil is not like the juice of the grape, which requires a chemical process to transform the sugar it contains into alcohol, in order that it may become wine; the oil is there, ready made within the fruit, and the utmost that can be done is to extract it, just as it is, bursting the cells within which it is enclosed, by crushing the olives and then pressing them." "Olive oil is found, not made." ”

“ At Marseilles the olive-oils are classed into manufacturing oils for burning, greasing machinery, and soap-making; refined oil; oil from the pulp or husks, and table or edible oil. The last is superfine, fine, half fine, and ordinary. The table oil is refined by allowing it to run through layers of thin sheets of wadding into tin perforated boxes. The wadding absorbs all the thick particles, and leaves the oil clear and tasteless. The olive crop is variable and uncertain, and is seldom profitable more than once in six or eight years. ”

“ No one who has engaged in oil extraction will be inclined to deny that the process is, at least, somewhat more difficult with absolutely fresh olives. While the immediate expression of oil is undoubtedly the best system, and growing in favor and practice, it must be admitted that, in all probability the greater proportion of olive oil and even the higher grades of oil are made after the olives have been partially dried. ”

“ The trouble with most foreigners in Italy, when they begin to talk about the rancid oil and other strange tasting native products, is that they have not previously known the real thing. Olive oil, real olive oil, tastes like—well, like olive oil. The other kinds, those we are mostly used to elsewhere, taste like cotton seed or peanut oil, which is probably what they are. One need not blame the Italian for this, though when he himself eats of it, or gives it you to eat, it is the genuine article. ”

“ It is a very agreeable and useful food. It is often added to, as an adulterant, or substituted for the true Almond oil. The best qualities of Olive oil are much esteemed, though they are not as agreeable to English taste as the oil previously mentioned. The best qualities are termed Virgin, Extra Sublime and Sublime. Any that has been exposed for more than a short time to the light and heat of a shop window should be rejected, as the flavour is affected. ”

“ As for the seasonings, the Spanish maxim which reads as follows is a good guide: "Be a miser with vinegar, a counselor with salt, and a spendthrift with oil." Let the oil be of the first quality of genuine olive-oil. In nearly all the large cities one may get fine oil by searching for it. Once found, there is no longer any difficulty, so long as the brand does not deteriorate. ”

“ It is not beyond credence that the happy possessor of a few producing olive trees would be willing to devote the time and labor necessary to extracting his own oil for household use, with the simplest of home machinery and especially when the physician tells him the value of olive oil as both medicine and food ”

“ The alterations to which olive oil is subject are various, and although numerous cures have been suggested, no remedy has ever yet been successful when once the alteration has commenced. Sometimes the disagreeable taste can be so disguised that it is not perceptible to the consumer ”

“ Pure virgin olive oil is made from the flesh of olives after the stones and skin have been removed; cheaper grades are made from the stones themselves and have little food value, while the virgin oil is one of the most nutritious and wholesome of foods. ”

“ On an equal acreage, and when from eight to ten years old, the product of an olive grove will be worth several times that of a vineyard; and under the same volume the oil will be ten times more valuable than wine, so that it can be delivered in a more economical manner. While with a four horse team a farmer will deliver about 600 gallons of wine per trip, representing a maximum value of $100, he can, with the same team, deliver olive oil to a value of over $1000. ”

“ Many years ago Sir Henry Thompson tried to persuade the British to substitute olive oil for lard. His advice affords at the same time an amusing glimpse of a certain culinary custom: "Excellent and fresh olive oil, which need not be so perfect in tint and flavor as the choicest kinds reserved for the salad bowl, is the [319] best available form of fat for frying, and is sold at a moderate price by the gallon for this purpose at the best Italian warehouses. Nothing, perhaps, is better than clarified beef dripping, such as is produced, often abundantly, in every English kitchen ”

“ The seeds are not wasted for the oil is pressed out and sold to be used, as olive oil is used in cooking and salad. Sometimes this oil is sold to men who get mixed in putting on the labels and instead of marking the bottles of oil with American labels, they get marked as fancy olive oil from Italy. ”

“ By far the most important of edible oils, both on account of its abundance and of its palatability, is olive oil. Olive oil has been used from the earliest historical times and probably was the first vegetable oil that was manufactured to any considerable extent in the early history of civilization. ”

“ That there is a growing demand for cotton seed oil for table use and culinary purposes is evidenced by the increased business of merchants who make a specialty of filling fancy bottles with cotton seed oil." We are all familiar with the fancy bottles and the blatant claim that they contain pure olive oil. These so called merchants are engaged in deceiving the public, in endeavoring to palm off cotton seed oil for olive oil. Cotton seed oil is refined by treatment with alkaline carbonates and caustic alkalies, and this fact is sufficient to condemn it as a food oil. ”

“ The oil is fine for salad, and all the other uses of olive oil, and may be extracted, as is the flax-seed oil, or by boiling water, to the top of which it will rise, and may be skimmed, and bottled or put into casks. It is very common on the west coast of Africa, and grows to most advantage on poor, sandy hills. ”

“ Palm-nut oil should absorb 10 to 13 per cent. iodine.
Olive Oil.—The olive is extensively grown in Southern Europe and in portions of Asia and Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The fruit of this tree yields the oil.
The free fatty acid content of olive oil varies very considerably. Very fine oils contain less than 1 per cent. acidity; commercial oils may be graded according to their free acidity, e.g., under 5 per cent., under 10 per cent., etc., and it entirely depends upon the desired price of the resultant soap as to what grade would be used. ”

“ Olive oil should absorb 80 to 83 per cent. iodine.
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Olive-kernel oil, more correctly termed Sulphur olive oil.
The amount of free fatty acids is always high and ranges from 40-70 per cent., and, of course, its glycerol content is proportionately variable. The free acidity increases very rapidly, and is, doubtless, due to the decomposition of the neutral oil by the action of hydrolytic ferment.
A representative sample of a parcel tested:—
Palm oil is produced from the fruit of palm trees, which abound along the west coast of Africa. ”

“ This Carron oil can be prepared in a very simple way. It consists of equal parts of olive oil and lime-water. Olive oil, or salad or Lucca oil, is the oil best suited for the purpose; but if not easily obtainable, linseed oil answers the purpose very well. Lime-water can be easily made by any one, if it cannot be procured otherwise. About a teaspoonful of the lime used by builders—if the purer kind is not obtainable—added to a pint of water and well shaken, is all that is required. ”

“ If the berry is left upon the tree the skin finally wrinkles and the color becomes a dull black. This is the state in which it is popularly supposed to give the most oil, which we have already shown to be a fallacy but even granting it to be true, the quality is inferior, the flavor gross and the oil soon becomes rancid. An olive is fully ripe when on being squeezed between the thumb and finger the soft pulp shows no white, but for many reasons, as we have seen, it may be desirable to forestall this period.
No time can be set when an olive crop should be harvested. ”