by no means unpalatable, without
materially impairing the taste of the cream.

The arrow-root powder is mixed up with a small quantity of cold skimmed
milk into a perfect, smooth, uniform mixture; more milk is then added,
and the whole boiled for a few minutes, to effect the solution of the
arrow-root: this compound, when perfectly cold, is mixed up with the
cream. From 220 to 260 grains, (or three large tea-spoonfuls) of
arrow root are added to one pint of milk; and one part of this solution
is mixed with three of cream. It is scarcely necessary to state that
this sophistication is innocuous.

The fraud may be detected by adding to a tea-spoonful of the
sophisticated cream a few drops of a solution of iodine in spirit of
wine, which instantly produces with it a dark blue colour. Genuine cream
acquires, by the addition of this test, a faint yellow tinge.

_Poisonous Confectionery._

In the preparation of sugar plums, comfits, and other kinds of
confectionery, especially those sweetmeats of inferior quality,
frequently exposed to sale in the open streets, for the allurement of
children, the grossest abuses are committed. The white comfits, called
sugar pease, are chiefly composed of a mixture of sugar, starch, and
Cornish clay (a species of very white pipe-clay;) and the red sugar
drops are usually coloured with the inferior kind of vermilion. The
pigment is generally adulterated with red lead. Other kinds of
sweetmeats are sometimes rendered poisonous by being coloured with
preparations of copper. The following account of Mr. Miles[110] may be
advanced in proof of this statement.

"Some time ago, while residing in the house of a confectioner, I
noticed the colouring of the green fancy sweetmeats being done by
dissolving sap-green in brandy. Now sap-green itself, as prepared from
the juice of the buckthorn berries, is no doubt a harmless substance;
but the manufacturers of this colour have for many years past produced
various tints, some extremely bright, which there can be no doubt are
effected by adding preparations of copper.

"The sweetmeats which accompany these lines you will find exhibit
vestiges of being contaminated with copper.--The practice of colouring
these articles of confectionery should, therefore, be banished: the
proprietors of which are not aware of the deleterious quality of the
substances employed by them."

The foreign conserves, such as small green limes, citrons, hop-tops,
plums,