Food Preservation

From the earliest times man has practised the art of food preservation. For thousands of years he has dried and salted the products of his agriculture or his hunting. Such processes became increasingly necessary as the population increased and man spread over the surface of the globe; but for centuries the art changed little and there was no development of method or understanding of fundamental principles. Preservation as an art received a great stimulus and began to develop into a science during the Napoleonic Wars. Indeed, rewards were then offered for successful processes; such was the stimulus of war. So during the first half of the nineteenth century meat was preserved in cans; fish and fruit were also canned with somewhat indifferent results. Outstanding names were those of Appert (1810), and of Liebig, who made meat extract in 1838, and of Borden who almost a hundred years ago took out a patent for the manufacture of condensed milk (1856).