“Pepper is mixed with fine dust, dirt, linseed-meal, ground rice, or mustard and wheat-flour; ginger, with wheat flour colored by turmeric and reinforced by cayenne. Cinnamon is sometimes not present at all in what is so called--the stuff being the inferior and cheaper cassia bark; sometimes it is only part cassia; sometimes the humbug part of it is flour and ochre. Cayenne-pepper is mixed with corn-meal and salt, Venetian-red, mustard, brickdust, fine sawdust, and red-lead. Mustard with flour and turmeric. Confectionery is often poisoned with Prussian-blue, Antwerp-blue, gamboge, ultramarine, chrome yellow, red-lead, white-lead, vermilion, Brunswick-green, and Scheele's green, or arsenite of copper! Never buy any confectionery that is colored or painted. Vinegar is made of whisky, or of oil of vitriol. Pickles have verdigris in them to make them a pretty green. "Pretty green" he must be who will eat bought pickles! Preserved fruits often have verdigris in them, too.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
The bell pepper is the best for pickling, and should be gathered when quite young. Slit one side, and carefully take out the core, so as not to injure the shell of the pepper. Then put them into boiling salt and water, changing the water every day for one week, and keeping them closely covered in a warm place near the fire. Stir them several times a day. They will first become yellow, and then green. When they are a fine green put them into a jar, and pour cold vinegar over them, adding a small piece of alum. They require no spice. You may stuff the peppers as you do mangoes.
Sources: The passage is from P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum, The Humbugs of the World: An Account of Humbugs, Delusions, Imposition, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Leslie, Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery of 1851, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — oxblood cloth, sheaf stamp.