webofevil | (no subject)

Chemists! A question. Here Lord Brabazon is describing a thing:

There was in those days a strange form of tinned food which you cannot get now. In a balloon you naturally cannot use a flame and consequently you could have nothing hot, for it was before the day of the thermos flask. But there was some tinned stuff called "Calorit" which consisted of any food such as stew or soup or anything you liked hot, the tin being inside another cylinder. When you wanted to eat you made a hole from the outside to the inside cylinder, and I suppose water came in contact with some chemical, for if you left it for about a quarter of an hour it became so hot you could hardly eat it. It was the most remarkable of tinned foods and I could never understand why it disappeared, for it would be of inestimable value nowadays for people in motor-cars.

I can find only one other reference to Calorit, in an 1905 article on feeding soldiers. What in all likelihood was the magic ingredient that superheated? And is the reason for its disappearance, as I strongly suspect, that it was actually massively carcinogenic?

EDIT: Thank you all. I feel mildly enlightened. Glad to have been wrong about the carcinogenic thing, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think calcium oxide has been used in this way. It gets very hot in contact with water, and produces calcium hydroxide, which is unpleasantly alkaline if concentrated, but completely non-toxic if reasonably diluted.

Seems I was correct:

I don't think it's disappeared, either. ISTR that Nestlé was using something similar for coffee-in-a-can within the last decade or so, (though I've never drunk the stuff and haven't seen it on the shelves lately)

ETA: http://www.packworld.com/print.php?id=13601

Edited 2011-10-11 14:40 (UTC)

The Nestle coffee failed because it had a short shelf life, owing to the milk(sic) content, and it didn't sell well enough to support the stock turnover that could support this.

It was also a Nestle product (la lucha continua) and quite, quite disgusting.