From DNA to Beer

A treatise on adulterations of food, and culinary poisons: exhibiting the fraudulent sophistications of bread, beer, wine, spiritous liquors, tea, coffee, cream, confectionary, vinegar, mustard, pepper, cheese, olive oil, pickles, and other articles employed in domestic economy; and methods of detecting them.

This book instructs the reader on how to detect sellers use to stretch ingredients and strengthen the potency of their products for the purpose of increasing sales and profits. It mentions the ways sellers interfere with the fermentation of alcohol to increase volume and its intoxicating effects. A main motif is the use of yeast and fermentation to create products for sale. The book predates Louis Pasteur’s groundbreaking work, which determined that microbes were the agents of fermentation, and that microbes come from like organisms, rather than spontaneously coming into existence or from dust, air, or dissimilar organisms. It reflects views of fermentation before Pasteur’s work.