Powder Wars: The Supergrass who Brought Down Britain's Biggest Drug Dealers

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Linda Civitello’s Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight That Revolutionized Cooking covers this and the other battles over baking powder: from getting people to buy it in the first place (they were used to mixing it themselves at home) to alum baking powder companies fighting each other in a brutal price war. But the cream of tartar versus alum debate is the longest-running (and most entertaining) feud detailed in the book. The Landwehr consisted of over sixty battalions and were equipped and trained as time and money allowed. A cheap but warm coat, comfortable cap and a musket were considered uniform enough to get thousands of troops out into the field for the restricted Prussian army of the time.

Ill-equipped and half-trained they may have been, but after a few months hard fighting they went on to fight with determination alongside their brothers in the Prussian Line regiments. Each regiment was not only numbered but also had a provincial identification, for example, the 12th Brandenburg infantry and each battalion was identified by number, so the first battalion of our Brandenburg regiment would be the 1/12 Brandenburg. Eventually, the alum baking powder companies won out, and Royal and Rumford were acquired by Clabber Girl, leaving it and Calumet as the reigning American companies on the market. You don't have to look far to see baking powder's continued hegemony today: cooks around the world use it in everything from cupcakes to crepes, muffins to madeleines, danishes to doughnuts. "The fact that you can find it in every major supermarket tells you something about how it's been embraced," Carbone says. I actually wouldn’t mind a return of your older Prussian Landwehr Infantry kit just to add some more varied sculpts as you inevitably need loads of them and the current kit is a bit “boring” after a while. A provocative and gripping story of industrial espionage, nineteenth century business barons, and baking powder. Linda Civitello has a rare talent for pitch-perfect storytelling. This is not just a food lover's book, but will also appeal to anyone interested in economics and history. Foodies, meanwhile, will savor the fascinating facts, tantalizing trivia, and action and intrigue sprinkled throughout. You'll savor every crumb!"--Francine Segan, author of Dolci: Italy's Sweets

Summary

In 1846, the introduction of baking soda, a salt that can react with an acid to create carbon dioxide, made things easier. But baking soda still needed to be mixed with an acid. Since it was cheap and widely available, bakers often used sour milk. This process was unpredictable, since it was hard to control how acidic the sour milk actually was, meaning it was difficult to know how much baking soda to use or how long to bake for.

In 1856, this need for a viable alternative drove a young chemist Eben Norton Horsford to create and patent the first modern baking powder. Horsford worked at a time when chemistry was only just beginning to be considered a respected field, and ended up creating the first modern chemistry lab in the United States at Harvard University. By boiling down animal bones to extract monocalcium phosphate, Horsford developed an acid compound that could react with baking soda to create those desirable CO2 bubbles. These exceptional miniatures are oozing character and cast in finest Warlord Resin are a must for any self-respecting (and those not quite so self-respecting) Napoleonic British wargamer. Baking powder is a pretty simple mixture: baking soda (a base), an acid, and a buffering material to keep the two from reacting before use. The buffer is usually cornstarch or flour; the acid can vary. At the time of Ziegler’s extradition hearing in 1903, Royal used cream of tartar, but almost everyone else used the cheaper and more potent sodium aluminum sulfate, or alum. Royal tried for years to besmirch alum’s good name, calling it unnatural and poisonous compared with Royal’s own “natural” recipe. (Cream of tartar is a by-product of the wine-making process and could be marketed as “from the grape.”) Yet consumers still preferred alum baking powders despite their “unnatural” origins. If Royal could get alum baking powders outlawed, then its more expensive cream-of-tartar baking powder would be the only product left on store shelves. It was a drastic measure, but all’s fair in love and war, and this was surely war. When the bribery was discovered and the story broke in the papers, Lee up and vanished. That’s right—the lieutenant governor fled the state! He returned after about a week and started naming names to a grand jury. His testimony is how Missouri knew to go after Ziegler and Kelley, who by then had hightailed it out of Missouri as well: Ziegler was safe in New York, and Kelley made it all the way to London. Even when it did work, leavening was a tedious process. "You're talking upwards of 12 hours of rising, usually more like 24 hours," says Jessica Carbone, a scholar in the National Museum of American History's Food History Project. Basically, forget about the joy of waking up and deciding to make pancakes.Artillery, whatever the weight, delivered death on an unprecedented scale during the Napoleonic wars. Assemble your Armies Beginning with British Well written and insightful, Baking Powder Wars is a model of superb scholarship and is essential reading for a wide spectrum of scholars, including those interested in food studies, women's studies, American studies, business, and advertising." -- Journal of American Culture In battle the British usually fought on the defensive, Wellington took great care to shelter his lads out of sight

Medium (sometimes known as a line) cavalry had a similar role to that of their heavier cousins. They also provided tactical flexibility, being capable of the pursuit of a defeated enemy or providing rearguard support during a retreat. Dragoons, in the main, fitted this role and were more numerous than the truly heavy cavalry.

Blurbs

The well-trained and disciplined Prussian horse during the Hundred Days campaign formed regiments of cuirassiers, dragoons, hussars and lancers on the whole with the lighter cavalry intended for raiding and skirmishing, but in reality, took their place in the main battle lines during set-piece battles.