The Peanut Plant: Its Cultivation And UsesJones, B. W.
Science
The Peanut Plant: Its Cultivation And Uses
Jones, B. W.
Peanuts
=Peanut Candy.=--This is another of the purposes to which the Peanut has
been applied, and serves to illustrate how varied and numerous are the
uses of this remarkable production. Flat bars of sugar candy are stuck
full of the broken kernels of the roasted nuts. It is quite good, and
forms a pleasing addition to other kinds of confectionery.
=Peanut Coffee.=--Here again the Peanut fills a useful end, especially
in times of scarcity, or high prices for coffee. Taken alone, and
without any addition whatever of the pure berry, the Peanut makes a
quite good and palatable beverage. It closely resembles chocolate in
flavor, is milder and less stimulating than pure coffee, and
considerably cheaper than Rio or Java. If mixed, half and half, with
pure coffee before parching, and roasted and ground together, the same
quantity will go as far and make about as good a beverage as the pure
article, and a better one than much of the ground and adulterated coffee
offered in the market. Indeed, if people will adulterate their coffee,
it were much to be wished that they would use nothing more harmful than
the Peanut for this purpose.
For making the beverage, the Peanut is parched and ground the same as
coffee, the mode of decoction the same, and it is taken with cream and
sugar, like the pure article.
=Peanut Chocolate.=--True chocolate is made by roasting and grinding to
a paste, by the aid of heat, a very oily seed, the Cocoa-bean. In the
preparation of chocolate a great variety of articles are used to
adulterate it and diminish its cost. Some of these, such as sugar and
starchy substances, are harmless, while others, such as mineral coloring
matters are injurious. Peanuts are largely used to adulterate chocolate,
and so far as wholesomeness is concerned, are not objectionable. In
containing a great deal of starch and oil, peanuts resemble the
cocoa-bean, though without the nitrogenous principle, _theobromine_
(which closely resembles _caffeine_), to which its nutritive qualities
are largely due. Peanut chocolate is made in some Southern families by
beating the properly roasted nuts in a mortar with sugar, and flavoring
with cinnamon or vanilla as may be desired. Peanut chocolate, on so high
an authority as the author, the late William Gilmore Simms, is vastly
superior to peanut coffee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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