Annatto is an orange-red colouring matter, obtained from the pulp surrounding the seeds of Bixa Orellana, a shrub native to tropical America, and cultivated in Guiana, St Domingo, and the East Indies. It was sometimes used as a dye for silk and cotton goods though it does not produce a very durable colour, but it is much used in medicine for tinging plasters and ointments, and to a considerable extent by farmers for giving a rich colour to cheese, and by the food industry as a food colouring. Research Annatto
Ivory is an opaque, creamy white, hard, fine-grained, modified dentin that composes the upper incisor teeth of an elephant. Ivory is composed of curved layers of dentine alternating in shade, that intersect one another; the resulting lozenge-shaped structure is elastic and finely grained. The layers of a tusk are deposited from the central pulp, so that the innermost layer is the newest. Most commercial elephant ivory is obtained from the tusks of the African elephant, mainly from eastern and central Africa. (Most of the ivory of the western half of Africa is hard, whereas that from the eastern half is soft. Hard ivory is glassier in texture, harder to cut and more likely to crack than soft ivory.)
Fossil ivory, called odontolite, is a blue variety that is found in small quantities in the frozen soil of northern Siberia. Odontolite was produced by the mammoths of the Pleistocene geological epoch; its blue colour results from saturation by metallic salts. Carved ivory has been used for decorative purposes since the time of the ancient Egyptians. Small pieces of ivory are used for high-quality furniture inlays, chess pieces, and small jewellery. Larger pieces of ivory sometimes have been used in the manufacture of billiard balls, piano keys, and toilet articles.
During the late 1980s, as Africa's elephant herds declined, environmentalists led a world-wide effort to shut down the ivory trade; in 1989 the USA and the European Union banned all ivory imports. Tusks of several other animals such as hippopotamuses, narwhals, sperm whales, and walruses are commonly called ivory and have similar physical properties, and many plastic substitutes for ivory have been developed. Several ivory-like vegetable parts are also used in imitation of ivory; the ivory palm, for example, produces large, white, hard seeds, called ivory nuts, the endosperm of which is commonly known as vegetable ivory. In painting, ivory is a delicate colour deeper in tone than off-white, but not so deep as cream. Research Ivory
Traditionally papier mache is made from old paper boiled to a pulp in water, then pressed and mixed with glue or starch paste before being forced into a previously oiled mould and dried. After drying the articles are soaked with linseed oil and dried at a higher temperature. Another variety of
papier mache involved sheets of paper - maybe as many as thirty or forty - pasted on to a metal core and then planed, varnished and polished with pumice stone before being decorated. Research Papier Mache
Anona is a genus of plants, the type of the natural order Anonaceae. Anona squamdsa (sweet-sop) grows in the West Indian Islands, and yields an edible fruit having a thick, sweet, luscious pulp. Anona muricata, (sour-sop) is cultivated in the West and East Indies; it produces a large pear-shaped fruit, of a greenish colour, containing an agreeable slightly acidpulp. The genus produces other edible fruits, as the common custard-apple or bullock's heart, from Anona reticulata, and the cherimoyer of Peru, from Anona Cherimolia. Research Anona
Aploppas (Bixa orillana) is a small South American tree rising almost ten metres tall, with broad, heart-shaped leaves and pointed, rose-coloured flowers which occur in bunches. The fruit is heart-shaped, three centimetres long, reddish-brown and covered with stiff prickles. Annatto is obtained by pulping the seeds, allowing the pulp to dry naturally and pressing it into cakes. Research Aploppas
Apple (Pyrus Malus), is the fruit of a well-known tree of the natural order Rosaceae, or the tree itself. The apple belongs to the temperate regions of the globe, over which it is almost universally spread and cultivated. The tree attains a moderate height, with spreading branches; the leaf is ovate; and the flowers are produced from the wood of the former year, but more generally from very short shoots or spurs from wood of two years' growth. The original of all the varieties of the cultivated apple is the wild crab, which has a small and extremely sour fruit, and is a native of most of the countries of Europe. The apple was probably introduced into Britain by the Romans, and there are now six thousand recorded varieties of English apple, divided into three categories: eating, cooking and cider.
To the facility of multiplying varieties by grafting is to be ascribed the amazing extension of the sorts of apples. Many of the more marked varieties are known by general names, as pippins, codlins, rennets, etc. Apples for the table are characterized by a firm juicy pulp, a sweetish acid flavour, regular form, and beautiful colouring; those for cooking by the property of forming by the aid of heat into a pulpy mass of equal consistency, as also by their large size and keeping properties; apples for cider must have a considerable degree of astringency, with richness of juice. The propagation of apple-trees is accomplished by seeds, cuttings, suckers, layers, budding, or grafting, the last being almost the universal practice. The tree thrives best in a rich deep loam or marshy clay, but will thrive in any soil provided it is not too wet or too dry. The wood of the apple-tree or the common crab is hard, close-grained, and often richly coloured, and is suitable for turning and cabinet work. The fermented juice (verjuice) of the crab is employed in cookery and medicine. Apples are largely imported into Great Britain from the Continent and the United States and Canada. The designation apple, with various modifying words, is applied to a number of fruits having nothing in common with the apple proper, as alligator-apple, love-apple, etc Research Apple
The assai-palm (Euterpe oleracea) is a native of tropical South America, only about ten centimetres in diameter and 20 metres high, with a crown of leaves, beneath which a small fruit grows on branched horizontal spadices. The pulp of the fruit mixed with water is used as a beverage. Research Assai-Palm
The avocado-pear also known as the avocado, alligator pear or subaltern's butter (Persea gratissima) is an evergreen tree of the family Lauraceae. It has a brownish or puplish pear-shaped berry, weighing around one to two pounds, and filled with an oily, green pulp similar in texture to butter. It is a native tree of tropical America and the West Indies. Research Avocado
A berry is a fleshy fruit formed from a monocarpellary or syncarpous ovary, containing one or more seeds each of which is surrounded only by its own hardened seed coat at dispersal. The fruit of the orange is a berry, for example. The name is usually given to fruits in which the calyx is adherent to the ovary and the placentas are parietal, the seeds finally separating from the placenta and lying loose in the pulp. The term, however, is frequently used to include fruits in which the ovary is free and the placentas central, as the grape. Popularly it is applied to fruits like the strawberry, bearing external seeds on a pulpy receptacle, but not strictly berries.
Bread-fruit (Artocarpus incisa) is a tree of the family Artocarpaceae, native to the East Indies and islands of the Pacific, but also grown in the Caribbean. The tree grows to a height of about 30 metres. The leaves are leathery, about one foot long and three or four inches wide. The fruit of the tree is a large globular fruit of a pale-green colour, about the size of a child's head, marked on the surface with irregular six-sided depressions, and containing a white and somewhat fibrous pulp, which when ripe becomes juicy and yellow and when roasted tastes somewhat like bread, hence the name. The sap of the tree is similar in appearance to cows milk, and is considered nutritious, hence the alternative name of cow-tree. The inner bark of the tree is made into a kind of cloth. The wood is used for the building of boats and for furniture. Research Bread-fruit
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Annatto
