han other vegetables. If
the vegetables have been picked for some time and the bacteria have
had a chance "to work," and you are not exceedingly careful about your
canning, you may develop "flat sour" in the soup. If you let one
little spore of this bacteria survive all is lost. Its moist growing
place is favorable to development, particularly if not much acid is
present. One little spore left in a jar will multiply in twenty hours
to some twenty millions of bacteria. This twenty million can stand on
the point of a needle, so a can could acquire quite a large population
in a short time. Bacteria do not like acids, so it is always a good
idea to have tomatoes in your soup mixture, and get the tomatoes into
the stone crock early in the game. The tomato acid will safeguard the
other vegetables which lack acid.

If you are careless about the blanching and cold-dipping--that is, not
doing these full time--if you work too slowly in getting the products
into jars and then let the full jars stand in the warm atmosphere, you
are pretty sure to develop "flat sour."

Place each jar in the canner as it is packed. The first jars in will
not be affected by the extra cooking. Have the water just below the
boiling point as you put in each jar. When you have the canner full
bring the water to the boiling point as quickly as possible and begin
to count cooking or sterilizing time from the moment it does boil.

Some women make the mistake at the end of the cooking period of
letting the jars remain in the boiling water, standing on the false
bottom of the canner until they are cool enough to handle with no
danger of burning the hands. This slow method of cooling not only
tends to create "flat sour," but it is apt to result in cloudy-looking
jars and in mushy vegetables.

For this reason you should have in your equipment a lifter with which
you can lift out the hot jars without the hands touching them. If you
use a rack with wire handles this answers the same purpose.

This "flat sour," which is not at all dangerous from the standpoint of
health, must not be confused with the botulinus bacteria, which is an
entirely different thing.

"Flat sour," perfectly harmless, appears often with inexperienced
canners. Botulinus, harmful, appears rarely. You need not be at all
alarmed about eating either "flat sour" or botulinus, because the odor
from spoiled goods is so distasteful--it really resembles rancid
cheese--that you would never get a