This is from a book that was published by Lorillard’s in 1960 for the company’s bicentennial: "Here is just a sample of what Pierre Lorillard had to do in 1760 to please the public. It is his recipe for Paris Rappee snuff; “Take a good strong virgin tobacco without stems. Cut this in pieces and make it wet in a barrel. [We don’t know what wet the tobacco, but chances are it was rum.] Set it in sweet (sweat) room at 100 degrees for 12 days. Make into powder, letting stand three to four months, adding 1 1/2 pounds salmoniac, 2 pounds tamarind, 2 oz. vanilla bean,1 oz. tonka bean, 1 oz. camomile flowers.”
Hello Snuffgrinder, Could also be plain water or a strong saline, which directs the fermentation and would be cheaper than rum, which you always can use afterwards as a flavoring. Jaap Bes.
This is the recipe as I copied it over 35 years ago and I think that it’s incomplete. Since the ammonium carbonate is really a small amount for a hundredweight of tobacco; the salt solution is the most likely.
Some additional information I found recently indicates that Lorillard did use a lot of alcohol in their old snuff formulas. This is a part of the recipe for Lorillard’s Maccoboy snuff: “Buy a mixture of tobacco leaf from Virginia and Kentucky, preferably around two years old, and make sure it’s not too ripe but is sweet as possible. Cut off the butts, or heads, and pile the leaves in a dry place for three to four months. Then put the leaves in bins for casing or curing, wetting it with liquor (rum, gin, or brandy) and salt water. To make the dry composition, add one tablespoonful refined gum camphor (“get best kind”), coarse salt (“roast it a good deal like coffee”), one tablespoonful gum Arabic (“you had better buy the best gum and pound it yourself”), one tablespoon Gum Guiac (“avoid the black, tarry flavoured kind, pay the druggist a little extra”). Be sure not to omit any ingredients: camphor gives life and power, and burnt salt flavor, while gum Arabic imparts a sweet taste and Gum Guiac sneezing power. To finish, add all the ingredients to a quart of high-proof alcohol and mix in the tobacco leaves.” From: Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City by Carla L. Peterson Yale University Press, 2011 pp. 151-2
“waist of alcohol” Is that the same thing as a beer belly?
Do you have a six pack under your keg?