This recipe for Cuba Rappee contains no Cuban tobacco but stripped Dutch Leaf.
Like other rappee snuffs puncheons are not sent to a water-powered mill on the River Wandle (like Scotch). Instead the tobacco is ground under large or small stones on site – ‘grain and flake being of great object’ [with rappee].
In keeping with the Industrial Revolution an 18 Horse Power steam engine eventually powered the two cutting machines, two mulls (for thorough mixing), large and small stones for grinding and a stalk machine. Originally a horse going round and round in circles would have dragged the stone(s) used for grinding.
I’m not mechanically minded enough to work out how it was done but the engine also seems to have powered steam pipes in a drying room for ‘segars’.
Out of the fourteen Primary Rappees this is the only one which is flavoured during the manufacturing process, in this case with arrack. The text warns against using rum as a substitute. It is also used in a number of mixtures including French Carotte, Paris and Bordeaux. Compare this production method with the Carotte Method described later.
Take two Hhds [Hogsheads] of fine Dutch Leaf cut in Stalk machine & grind it under big stones to separate the stalks till it sifts through [the] cane sieve, when it will be about 21 cwt (2352lb) ground leaf. Lay it up in [the] bin with 21 pots (84 gallons) of liquor with 21lb of Common Salt for 14 days. Turn it if sufficiently warm and in another 14 days mix 7% Common Salt (164lb) well worked in so as not to show. Grind under small stones for 1 hour. Mix 4 bottles of fine old arrack in two gallons of water and sprinkle over it [the parcel]. Grind under small stones for another ½ hour. Mull & sift through 17 sieve for coarse or 24 sieve for fine. The Returns from the first grinding are ground again.
Carotte Method of Snuff Production
This is the best description of this method of snuff production, and which to the best of my knowledge has long been obsolete. The text is from ‘Ten Minutes Advice in Choosing Cigars: With a Word Or Two On Tobacco, and Something About Snuff’. The author is anonymous. He maintains that this Method produces the finest possible snuff.
The finest qualities are made abroad, particularly in Holland. Their superiority may be mainly attributed to the absence of that excessive duty on Tobacco, which, in England, yields three millions annually to the’revenue. The foreign Snuff manufacturer not being loaded with this burthen upon his capital, can afford to allow his Snuff works to remain in process more years than we do months. Their method is as follows: after selecting the leaf, they roll it up in a moist state, into what is termed Carotte, being long rolls of Tobacco, weighing from four to six pounds each. It is not an uncommon thing to see five or six thousand of these Carottes piled up on shelves in one room, where they are suffered to remain for four or five years, perhaps more. During this period, they undergo an almost imperceptible heat or fermentation, which renders them beautifuly mellow. They are eventually rasped into Snuff by a sort of circular file, thus entirely avoiding the serious injury to the Snuff which our ponderous mills produce, from that violent friction that the material is subjected to. The gradual manner in which the fermentation of the leaf proceeds, is of the most essential advantage to the foreign Snuff; whilst in England, owing to the vast capital that would otherwise lie idle, the Snuff work is driven into a rapid and violent heat, which invariably produces what is termed the sweet-sour flavour, most materially interfering with the natural beauty of the Tobacco.