Historical
Origins of Food Preservation
Brian
A. Nummer, Ph.D.
National
Center for Home Food Preservation
May
2002
Introduction
The
astonishing fact about food preservation is that it permeated
every culture at nearly every moment in time. To survive ancient
man had to harness nature. In frozen climates he froze seal meat
on the ice. In tropical climates he dried foods in the sun.
Food
by its nature begins to spoil the moment it is harvested. Food
preservation enabled ancient man to make roots and live in one
place and form a community. He no longer had to consume the kill
or harvest immediately, but could preserve some for later use.
Each culture preserved their local food sources using the same
basic methods of food preservation.
Drying
In
ancient times the sun and wind would have naturally dried foods.
Evidence shows that Middle East and oriental cultures actively
dried foods as early as 12,000 B.C. in the hot sun. Later cultures
left more evidence and each would have methods and materials to
reflect their food supplies—fish, wild game, domestic animals,
etc.
Vegetables
and fruits were also dried from the earliest times. The Romans
were particularly fond of any dried fruit they could make. In the
Middle Ages purposely built "still houses" were created to dry
fruits, vegetables and herbs in areas that did not have enough
strong sunlight for drying. A fire was used to create the heat
needed to dry foods and in some cases smoking them as well.
Freezing
Freezing
was an obvious preservation method to the appropriate climates.
Any geographic area that had freezing temperatures for even part
of a year made use of the temperature to preserve foods. Less than
freezing temperatures were used to prolong storage times. Cellars,
caves and cool streams were put to good use for that purpose.
In
America estates had icehouses built to store ice and food on ice.
Soon the "icehouse" became an "icebox". In the 1800's mechanical
refrigeration was invented and was quickly put to use. Also in the
late 1800's Clarence Birdseye discovered that quick freezing at
very low temperatures made for better tasting meats and
vegetables. After some time he perfected his "quick freeze"
process and revolutionized this method of food preservation.
Fermenting
Fermentation
was not invented, but rather discovered. No doubt that the first
beer was discovered when a few grains of barley were left in the
rain. Opportunistic microorganisms fermented the starch-derived
sugars into alcohols. So too can be said about fruits fermented
into wine, cabbage into Kim chi or sauerkraut, and so on. The
skill of ancient peoples to observe, harness, and encourage these
fermentations are admirable. Some anthropologists believe that
mankind settled down from nomadic wanderers into farmers to grow
barley to make beer in roughly 10,000 BC. Beer was nutritious and
the alcohol was divine. It was treated as a gift from the gods.
Fermentation
was a valuable food preservation method. It not only could
preserve foods, but it also created more nutritious foods and was
used to create more palatable foods from less than desirable
ingredients. Microorganisms responsible for fermentations can
produce vitamins as they ferment. This produces a more nutritious
end product from the ingredients.
Pickling
Pickling
is preserving foods in vinegar (or other acid). Vinegar is
produced from starches or sugars fermented first to alcohol and
then the alcohol is oxidized by certain bacteria to acetic acid.
Wines, beers and ciders are all routinely transformed into
vinegars.
Pickling
may have originated when food was placed in wine or beer to
preserve it, since both have a low pH. Perhaps the wine or beer
went sour and the taste of the food in it was appealing.
Containers had to be made of stoneware or glass, since the vinegar
would dissolve the metal from pots. Never ones to waste anything
our ancestors found uses for everything. The left over pickling
brine found many uses. The Romans made a concentrated fish pickle
sauce called "garum". It was powerful stuff packing a lot of fish
taste in a few drops.
There
was a spectacular increase in food preservation in the sixteenth
century owing to the arrival in Europe of new foods. Ketchup was
an oriental fish brine that traveled the spice route to Europe and
eventually to America where someone finally added sugar to it.
Spices were added to these pickling sauces to make clever recipes.
Soon chutneys, relishes, piccalillis, mustards, and ketchups were
commonplace. Worcester sauce was an accident from a forgotten
barrel of special relish. It aged for many years in the basement
of the Lea and Perrins Chemist shop.
Curing
The
earliest curing was actually dehydration. Early cultures used salt
to help desiccate foods. Salting was common and even culinary by
choosing raw salts from different sources (rock salt, sea salt,
spiced salt, etc.). In the 1800's it was discovered that certain
sources of salt gave meat a red color instead of the usual
unappetizing grey. Consumers overwhelmingly preferred the red
colored meat. In this mixture of salts were nitrites (saltpeter).
As the microbiology of Clostridium botulinum was elucidated in the
1920's it was realized that nitrites inhibited this organism.
Jam
and Jelly
Preservation
with the use of honey or sugar was well known to the earliest
cultures. Fruits kept in honey were commonplace. In ancient Greece
quince was mixed with honey, dried somewhat and packed tightly
into jars. The Romans improved on the method by cooking the quince
and honey producing a solid texture.
The
same fervor of trading with India and the Orient that brought
pickled foods to Europe brought sugar cane. In northern climates
that do not have enough sunlight to successfully dry fruits
housewives learned to make preserves—heating the fruit with sugar.
Canning
Canning
is the process in which foods are placed in jars or cans and
heated to a temperature that destroys microorganisms and
inactivates enzymes. This heating and later cooling forms a vacuum
seal. The vacuum seal prevents other microorganisms from
recontaminating the food within the jar or can.
Canning
is the newest of the food preservations methods being pioneered in
the 1790s when a French confectioner, Nicolas Appert, discovered
that the application of heat to food in sealed glass bottles
preserved the food from deterioration. He theorized "if it works
for wine, why not foods?" In about 1806 Appert's principles were
successfully trialed by the French Navy on a wide range of foods
including meat, vegetables, fruit and even milk. Based on Appert's
methods Englishman, Peter Durand, used tin cans in 1810.
Appert
had found a new and successful method to preserve foods, but he
did not fully understand it. It was thought that the exclusion of
air was responsible for the preservations. It was not until 1864
when Louis Pasteur discovered the relationship between
microorganisms and food spoilage/illness did it become clearer.
Just prior to Pasteur's discovery Raymond Chevalier-Appert
patented the pressure retort (canner) in 1851 to can at
temperatures higher than 212ºF. However, not until the 1920's was
the significance of this method known in relation to Clostridium
botulinum.
Conclusion
Some
historians believe that food preservation was not only for
sustenance, but also cultural. They point to numerous special
occasion preserved foods that have religious or celebratory
meanings. In America more and more people live in cities and
procure foods commercially. They have been removed from a rural
self-sufficient way of life. Yet, for many, a garden is still a
welcome site. And, annually there exists a bounty crop of
vegetables and fruits. It is this cultural nature of preserved
foods that survives today. Interests have shifted from preserve
"because we have to", to "preserve because we like to."
References
and Sources
Mc Govern, P. The
Origins and Ancient History of Wine at the University of
Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology. Available at http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Wine/wineintro.html.
Accessed 2002 Feb 12.
Shephard, S. 2001. Pickled,
Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving
Changed the World. Simon & Schuster. 366pp.
Eden T. 1999. The
Art of Preserving: How Cooks in Colonial Virginia Imitated Nature
to Control It. Eighteenth Century Life 23(2):13 23. Also
available from: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ eighteenth
century_life/v023/23.2eden.html Accessed 2001 Sep 30.
Mack L. 2001. Food
Preservation in the Roman Empire. Chapel Hill, NC.
University of North Carolina. Available from: http://www.unc.edu/courses/rometech/public
/content/survival/Lindsay_Mack/Food_Preservation.htm. Accessed
2001 Sep 30.
C. Anne Wilson. 1991. Preserving
Food to Preserve Life: The Response to Glut and Famine from Early
Times to the End of the Middle Ages in "Waste Not, Want
Not": Food Preservation from Early Times to the Present, C. Anne
Wilson. ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ.
This
material is based upon work supported by the Cooperative State
Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of
Agriculture, under Agreement No. 00-51110-9762.
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Reprinted
with permission of the University of Georgia. B.A. Nummer. 2002.
Historical Origins of Food Preservation. Athens, GA: The
University of Georgia, National Center for Home Food Processing
and Preservation.
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