How is food preserved?

Learning to preserve food

Food is preserved by salting, drying or refrigerating it.

Tricks of the past

Every day we eat preserved food, as it was done in the days of our ancestors: fish or salty meats (ham, cod …), dried foods (dried fruits) or bathed in vinegar (partridges) and sweets (fruit pastes, candied fruits … ).

Recent inventions

In 1809, Nicolas Appert discovered that boiled food kept for a long time in a tightly closed container. The first cans of preserves were sold in 1820. But to open them you needed a cold cutter and a hammer, since the can opener was not invented until 1860. Food that is not preserved or in the refrigerator, rots due to bacteria. By boiling food in jars, or by freezing it, these bacteria are killed.

Ice, a good preservative

Before the refrigerator was invented, men already knew that cold and ice are good preservatives. This idea occurred to fishermen and hunters in the Nordic countries when they noticed that fish and game frozen by the cold outside were preserved without spoiling.

Curiosities

The first refrigerator that worked with electricity was invented in the United States in 1922, but it would not reach Europe until five years later.