Mayonnaise made with drugstore liquid paraffin, because it has no food value.
Mineral oil, which may be purchased from the drug store, has no food value. It may be used to make mayonnaise dressing by following the mayonnaise recipe and using mineral oil instead of the other oil called for. Mineral oil is mildly laxative, an added advantage.
Modernistic Recipe-Menu Book, 1929. Public domain; transcription unaltered.
It is a petroleum distillate sold as a laxative. The reducing logic is airtight and horrible: it passes through undigested, so it contributes nothing, so you may eat it freely.
That same property is the harm. It dissolves the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K on the way past and carries them out with it. Eaten by the spoonful over a diet, that is a real deficiency risk.
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Read the original page →“Equal parts of gum opium, gum camphor, and spirits of turpentine, dissolved in spirits.” For stomach pain. Taken by mouth.
The House-Keeper's Guide and Indian Doctor · 1851
Dilute battery acid, orange syrup, two gallons of water. “Entirely harmless, even if taken in considerable quantities.”
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
“Provide leaden moulds… oiled with oil of sweet almonds.” Boiling candy syrup goes straight into the lead. The sweets are for children.
Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts · 1867