Читать книгу Canning Essentials - Jackie Callahan Parente - Страница 12

While it seems like an honorable old convention, canning is really the newcomer on the home food-preservation scene. In the 1790s, French confectioner and father of canning Nicolas Appert experimented for nearly fifteen years in an attempt to win an award offered by French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who needed a practical way to feed his armies. Appert’s efforts were successful: he discovered that applying heat to food in sealed glass bottles helped to prevent food deterioration. Not only did he win Bonaparte’s award, but the House of Appert became the first commercial cannery in the world. While Appert’s methods were widely applied—meat, vegetables, fruit, and milk were processed in glass bottles and, later, tin cans—it wasn’t until Louis Pasteur that we really understood why the heat application helped preserve the food. Pasteur’s discovery of pasteurization in 1864 clarified the relationship between microorganisms, food spoilage, and illness, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter.

The same foods that could be preserved by being dried could also be successfully preserved using other methods, such as freezing. Cranberries are a good example of this.