These
are not good raw, but are fine when baked or boiled.
ANNOTTO.
We have often heard people speak of butter and cheese being colored, but
did not know that the dairyman was obliged to send to the West Indies
for his dye. The bush which provides it is called the annotto or
annatto. It grows to the size of the quince tree. The leaves are
heart-shaped; and the rosy flowers are followed by fuzzy red-and-yellow
pods, something like chestnut burs.
These small burs are filled with a crimson pulp containing many seeds.
This pulp is immersed in water a few weeks, strained and boiled to a
paste. The paste is made into cakes and dried in the sun. Then it comes
to our country and appears upon our tables in butter or cheese.
Can you tell me where bay rum comes from? We have often wondered, and
find here an answer to the question. It is furnished by the bay tree,
which grows here. The leaves are distilled and the oil extracted from
them to furnish this perfume for the bath.
SPICES.
Spices, in some form, are served every day upon our table; yet few of us
know where they come from, or where, how, or upon what they grow.
We have heard of the Spice Islands, perhaps, and we just take it for
granted that they all grow there. We are very much surprised, then, to
find many of the spices in Puerto Rico.
ALLSPICE, OR PIMENTO.
The pimento spice is native to this soil. The groves of these trees are
beautiful. The trees grow to a height of thirty feet, their stems are
smooth and clean, and their leaves glossy.
[Illustration: BRANCH AND BUD OF PIMENTO (ALL-SPICE).]
The trees bear fruit when about seven years old. The berries are
gathered green and dried in the sun. The branches to which the berries
are attached are broken off by boys and thrown to girls and women, who
pick off the berries, and take them to the drying places. One tree
sometimes bears a hundred pounds.
The tree likes the hills and mountains along the sea, a hot climate and
a dry atmosphere.
THE NUTMEG TREE.
The nutmeg tree grows to a height of thirty to fifty feet. The ripe
fruit looks somewhat like the apricot on the outside. It bursts in two
and shows the dark nut covered with mace, a bright scarlet. This is
stripped off and pressed flat. The shells are broken open when perfectly
dry, and the nuts powdered with lime to prevent the attacks of worms.
The tree bears the sixth or seventh year, - the nuts becoming ripe six
months after the flower appears. Twenty thousand nuts are sometimes
gathered from one tree.
