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The origin of canned food

2020/09/25


It is said that the origin of the can is related to the French Emperor Napoleon. 
At the end of the 18th century, the French emperor Napoleon led an army to fight in all directions. Because the front line was too long, a large amount of food would rot and deteriorate after being transported to the front line. So he offered a reward of 12,000 francs, hoping to find someone who could invent the technology and equipment to prevent food deterioration. This huge sum of money was awarded to him.
Many scientists in France were thinking hard about this. At that time, there was a man named Nicolas Appel who worked as a worker in a sauerkraut factory, a winery, a candy store and a restaurant, and later became a chef. When he was selling foods such as fruit syrup and wine, he found that some tend to go bad, while some are not easy to go bad. He also accidentally discovered that if the food sealed in a glass container is properly heated, it will not deteriorate easily. He was greatly inspired by it. Therefore, Appel responded to the government's reward and conducted special research on food preservation methods. 


After ten years of arduous research, he finally succeeded in 1804. His method is: process the food, put it in a jar, place all in a boiling water pot, heat it for 30-60 minutes, stop it with a cork while it is hot, and reinforce it with a thread or seal it with wax. In this way, the food can be preserved for a longer period of time without decay. This is the prototype of modern canned food.
Soon after Appel's glass cans came out, British Peter Durant made tinplate cans and obtained a patent in the UK. At the beginning of the 19th century, canning technology spread to the United States, and canning factories appeared in Boston and New York. In 1849, American Henry Evans opened an unprecedented cannery. In 1862, French biologist Pasteur published a paper clarifying that food spoilage is caused by bacteria. Therefore, the canning factory adopts the steam sterilization technology to make the canned food reach the absolutely sterile standard.
The method of storing canned food in China was applied to the folk as early as three thousand years ago. The earliest agricultural book "Qi Min Yao Shu" has such a record: "First cut the livestock meat into pieces, add salt and wheat flour, mix well, mix, and seal the inside with a dense mud in porcelain." This is the same as modern cans. There are differences, but the truth is the same.