Here are some genuine old recipes for industrial production of snuff at a major London House that some readers may find interesting. At the top of each second page are numbers which refer to detailed notes taken by a junior partner who was learning the snuff-making trade. With the exception of Jefferson’s Mixture all these recipes are classed as Rappees, Primary. Why they are classed as primary snuffs could be because they were best-sellers but also because some (particularly Best Common-a black snuff) are used in the many rappee mixtures. Violet Brown and No.39 are the most labour-intensive and time-consuming to make. Adulterations such as Fuller’s Earth and liquoring with copperas would likely be illegal today.
The figures appearing in the right-hand column of each first page is a proportional reduction of the figures appearing in the left-hand column.
[A hundredweight (cwt) is 112 pounds in weight. Hhd referred to in the recipes means Hogshead. Pot liquor = 4 gallons: cisterns 1 inch = 5 gallons. Bin L=11 ft, D=5ft, W=8ft.
Lime, Pearl Ash, Salt Tartar, Common Salt, Copperas and Alum for liquoring tobacco is measured in units of ‘ty’ which refers to Tray. Four gallons is equal to 40 ty. Each Tray is therefore 0.8 pints.]
Recipe for 8L or Violet Brown Scotch mentioned by Henry Dupre Labouchere (Tobacco Whiffs for the Smoking Carriage) as once very popular in Cornwall. S.T in the recipe refers to Salt Tartar. It would be very difficult to make today without first making S.P Scotch and X Scotch according to recipe (the latter includes an adulteration of Fuller’s Earth). But the colour of the resulting snuff from which the name derives sounds interesting. The finished product would be extra-coarse. Four pages of notes accompany this recipe which along with No.39 is the most labour-intensive recipe in the collection. It sold at a wholesale price of 3/8 per pound.
A recipe for P.G Coarse or Single P Fine Dutch: I know that the P stands for Polhill (a snuff manufacturer and miller) from the notes but can only guess that the G stands for Gross. The sole difference between the two is that P is sifted through a 20 sieve (coarse) and P.G through a 17 sieve (extra-coarse). As expected, the tobacco used is Dutch. A late 18th century trade card shows that Edward and Robert Polhill had their manufactory at No.35 Borough, Southwark, but the snuff-making extends back to 1756 when Nathaniel Polhill leased a water mill at Morden. He later became MP for Southwark from 1774 until 1782 when he died. The snuff-making business passed to Edward and Robert that year (1782). It’s not recorded how Taddy & Co came into possession of the recipe but the company would have been on familiar terms with the Polhills as they used their water-wheel for snuff-grinding until 1831 when Taddy & Co took over the lease of the mill.
The recipe for Cuba Rappee, unexpectedly, also uses Dutch leaf and not Cuban leaf. Sold under this name today it probably would not pass muster with the Trade Description Act. It is scented with arrack (like Old Paris) and provides a very nice example of an old rappee recipe. It is one of the very few snuffs that are not scented through the medium of G (a snuff made for that purpose only). The notes refer to bottles of ‘very fine old Arrack, full of flavour’. They also describe the detailed operations in rolling under stones - ‘flake & grain being of great object in this snuff’. Stones used for crushing are described as being 12 inches in width and 3 feet 4 inches in depth. The notes also caution that rum must not be mixed with the arrack.
No.39 S or Geo.Brown Rapee is very labour intensive and like 8L calls for Salt Tartar as well as Common Salt. The four pages of notes for No.39 are (with Violet Brown) the most extensive for any snuff listed. An early newspaper advertisement describes it as No. 39, Genuine – Taddy & co, Minories.
B.C .Rappee or Best Common calls for ‘strip’t’ Virginia leaf’ and includes the use of copperas in the liquoring process. I very much doubt that this would be legal today. Best Common is listed as a Primary Rappee which could be sold as fine, coarse or extra coarse using size 24, 20 and 17 cane sieves respectively. It also appears in many mixtures such as Gillespie’s and Imperial Black. The notes say: Used principally in cellar as portion (underlined) for fancy rappees, and then goes on to describe how a parcel of Best Common is laid down.
The rappee snuffs are all more difficult and time consuming to make than the Scotch snuffs as evident by copious notes.
Finally is the recipe for a mixture which I posted before. Jefferson’s Mixture, which is possibly named after Thomas Jefferson the third president of the new United States of America who served from 1801 until 1809. As with the majority of scented snuffs the scent process is not applied directly but via the medium of G (made solely for that purpose) and uses 100 S.P. as a proportion. The regularity with which the latter occurs in Scotch mixtures suggests the origin of SP 100 as made by Wilsons of Sharrow to this day.