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(Continued from page 15)

bubbling masses, for this room is simply a gargantuan kitchen on jam day. My own cooking knowledge was improved here by the statement that “quick boiling” was the art of jam and conserve making. Here are efficient devices for ensuring speed in boiling.

Mechanical ingenuity has reached heights in many parts of Whittome Stevenson's factory. The onion machine is a good example. This is a revolving cylinder holding gas and air, turning at twelve revolutions a minute. It is fluted so as to harass the outer skins, and eventually only the white, clear globe of each onion remains. The tops and tails are removed rather like those of the old-fashioned gooseberry, a task most of us remember with misgivings.

I also observed the expert bottle smeller whose nose detected any taint of flavour in any bottle. By way of exact opposite to the many mechanical devices, there were many busy women cutting up cauliflowers and other vegetables. No substitute for skilful hands has yet been able to cope with this task.

One of the wonders of this factory is the cool-room for vegetables. Differing strengths of brine are employed and I learned of the interesting discovery of the “open vat.”

Light is the deadly enemy of the fungus, which is the danger in cool storage. There was real comfort to me in the huge collections of poor-man oranges, tomatoes and other products of the New Zealand soil. I found that Whittome Stevenson use all local products, most of it coming from Pukekohe and the district. Our season, which lasts from January to May, accounts for the need for storage in such ample fashion.

It is, of course, obvious that it is of great importance that such firms as Whittome Stevenson should expand and that New Zealanders should use their own products, in this case, sauces, pickles and conserve. We know that these products are pure when the ingredients come from our own gardens and are grown by our own fellow-countrymen under proper State supervision.

One fact is worth mentioning—we can't grow gherkins, although plenty of encouragement has been given by Whittome Stevenson. Ours have a hard, little spine, so that the first local Burbank who grows a real gherkin has a fortune awaiting him.

I am looking forward to the day when many thousands of New Zealanders will be needed to supply, from their own gardens, all the ingredients for such products as pickles, sauces, and their like.

There is no excuse for bringing these things from overseas.

The common ingredient of these four industrial establishments is the fact that they are all four of great age, of great experience of local needs, and all have a continuity of family management. They are wholly and purely New Zealand institutions, and we should be all the more proud of their efficiency and modernity as manufacturing units for that good, golden reason.