Culinary chemistry and poisonous pickles: Friedrich Christian Accum

Friedrich Christian Accum, a German chemist whom life threw right into the Industrial Revolution, had a passion for food that extended well beyond the holiday season.

Born in Westphalia, a region of Germany known today for its hearty stews, dark rye bread, and specialty ham, he moved in the 1790s to London—a rapidly expanding, industrialized city with a thriving market in processed food. Once he saw the artificially bright green pickles served there, Accum felt it was his duty as a chemist to educate the public about the things they put in their mouths. Today his trailblazing publications on food preservation and preparation, food additives, beer, and wine add a certain spice to the Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library at CHF.

All things bright and chemical: Accum’s career
Accum is best known for bringing gas lights (formerly reserved for illuminating streets and public places) to the homes of Englishmen: he played an important role in establishing Britain’s first gaslighting utilities.

But Accum was also enlightened in other areas of chemistry. His long career started with his apprenticeship in apothecary shops in Germany and England; he then was assistant chemical operator to Humphrey Davy; and he later was the first author to publish in English on the new chemistry promoted by a certain Frenchman named Antoine Lavoisier.

Accum's book about culinary poisioning carries a potent warning.

Like many of his contemporaries, Accum was fascinated by the fact that chemical processes are essential to the production of various foods and beverages. Bread, cheese, beer, wine, and sweets take center stage in the four books he published in the short space of two years, from 1820 through 1821. In these books Accum presents a great deal of information about the history, nature, and components of these foodstuffs, and he shows his readers how to keep them good and natural. These publications are comparable to conserves of information, made palatable through Accum’s accessible style.

Always eager to share knowledge with the educated public, Accum also delivered public lectures on mineralogy and metals, and generally had a high presence in the chemical world of the early 19th century.

Given that Accum wore so many public hats, his sudden disappearance from the English scene around 1821 was startling. It was due to a big appetite for information and chocolate: using libraries in a pre-Xerox era, Accum simply ripped pages out of books whenever he wanted to read them at home. He was caught stealing an article on chocolate, was prosecuted, and fled the country before any penalty was enforced. A bittersweet ending to his English career indeed!

Fermenter, used in beer production.

A poison pen
Friedrich Christian Accum is a good example of the multitasking chemist whose careers could not have been combined at a different point in history. A man with two languages, many skills, and no inhibitions when it came to highlighting problematic issues, he was modern in many ways.

Far ahead of his time, Accum was greatly concerned about food additives and pollution and other repercussions of industry and chemistry. His most controversial book unveiled the secrets of things such as “poisonous” pickles and glowingly green sweets (both colored with the help of copper) as well as the names of the men who had been prosecuted for their manufacture.

Accum’s decision to educate the public and put fraudsters and penny-pinching producers of strangely colorful food out of business was daring. He may not have had many friends in his lifetime, but his unflinching view of the food business still strikes a chord with readers today.

Perhaps ironically, Accum’s death at the age of 69 was due to gout—a disease whose symptoms are controlled today by a strict diet excluding beer and wine.

View the books in the Othmer Library's catalog

• Culinary chemistry: Culinary chemistry, exhibiting the scientific principles of cookery, with concise instructions for preparing good and wholesome pickles, vinegar, conserves, fruit jellies, marmalades, and various other alimentary substances employed in domestic economy, with observations on the chemical constitution and nutritive qualities of different kinds of food (London, 1821).
• "There is death in the pot": A treatise on adulterations of food, and culinary poisons: exhibiting the fraudulent sophistications of bread, beer, wine, spirituous liquors, tea, coffee, cream, confectionery, vinegar, mustard, pepper, cheese, olive oil, pickles, and other articles employed in domestic economy; and methods of detecting them (London, 1820)
• Brewing: A treatise on the art of brewing: exhibiting the London practice of brewing porter, brown stout, ale, table beer and various other kinds of malt liquors (London, 1820)
• Winemaking: A treatise on the art of making wine from native fruits : exhibiting the chemical principles upon which the art of wine making depends; the fruits best adapted for home made wines, and the method of preparing them ( London , 1820)