Chicory, What Is It?

Chicory, What is it?

Nature of the Plant to be Raised Here.

The Use to Which the Plant is Put, for the Grinding of Which a Factory is Being Started.

The chicory or succory plant is of the composite family. It is found most frequently in its wild state in dry chalky soils, or by the road-sides. It has a long fleshy tap root, a rigid branching hairy stem rising to a height of from 2 to 3 feet, the leaves around the base being lobed and toothed, not unlike those of the dandelion. The flowers are of a bright blue color sometimes running into a purple, few in number and measuring about 1 1/2 inches across.

Chicory is largely cultivated in Europe, and as a cultivated plant it bas three distinct applications. Its roots roasted and ground are used as a substitute for, adulterant of, or addition to coffee; both roots and leaves are employed in salads; and the plant is grown as a fodder or herbage crop which is greedily consumed by cattle.

For the preparation of chicory the older stout white roots are selected, and after washing they are sliced up into small pieces and kiln-dried. It is then roasted until it becomes of a dark brown color and looks very much like coffee when ground, but is destitute of its pleasing aromatic odor.

It gives the coffee additional color, bitterness and body, and may perhaps, as a seductive tonic, and diuretic, modifies its stimulating and irritating effects. In Belgium the roots are boiled and eaten with butter and all over Europe they are kept in the cellar in. the winter for salads. It was only a few years ago since a great many of our older citizens drank chicory with and without being mixed with coffee. At one time, the price of a cup of coffee in a restaurant, was slightly higher, when chicory was used with the coffee bean, than when pure coffee alone was used.