WEBVTT - Canning 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.720 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:09.840 --> 0:00:13.360 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:17.520 Joe McCormick. And often on the Invention podcast we explore 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:20.480 inventions in the realm of getting food into your body. 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:23.160 That's right, And this is the perfect month to discuss 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:26.880 some food technology, right, because it's it's November, where in 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:29.920 the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving, which is, of course, 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.519 is a time when you were thankful for your food ideally, 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:37.280 but also you engage in some gluttonous or semi gluttonous 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.120 behavior to celebrate said food. You're thankful for the elasticity 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:44.080 of your stomach lining, right, and I should go deeper that, 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:46.159 I mean, ultimately, it is a you see this in 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:48.519 various cultures, right, it is the It is the the 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:53.320 final big feast before winter truly sets in and threatens 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:55.840 your survival. Yeah, the end of harvest feast day. Yeah, 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.240 of course, Uh, but you know so. One of the 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:02.080 overarching stories we often tell l about the correlation between 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:06.080 technology and and the timeline of human history has to 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.640 do with nutrition. Of course, like to sustain a civilization 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:12.959 in which most people don't spend the vast majority of 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:16.720 their time on food procurement and production. You need a 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.840 lot of specialized knowledge and a lot of technological leverage, 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:23.119 which humans did acquire in stages over the past ten 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.680 thousand years or so, largely in the form of agricultural innovations. 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.319 How to farm, how to get bigger crop yields, how 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.440 to grow better food products, etcetera. But when you think 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.000 about the problem of how to feed the humans of 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.360 the world, there's a whole second part of the equation 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.640 that has nothing to do with the initial production of 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.840 the food products we eat, because there is this vast 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:50.240 terrain of obstacles and challenges between the moment and egg 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.120 is laid or the moment of potato is harvested, or 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.840 the moment a cow is milked, and the moment that 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:59.880 that final food product is eaten by a human. In fact, 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:04.080 you might be shocked to discover how much perfectly good 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:07.080 food is produced on planet Earth, only to never be 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:11.280 eaten by anyone. I'm embracing myself because this stuff always 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:15.360 makes my skin crawlity here, yeah, it's it's it's shocking actually, 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:18.480 so according to the u N Food and Agricultural Organization, 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:24.120 it's estimated that roughly thirty percent, or about one third, 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.919 of the food produced by humans on Earth every year 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:31.679 is wasted by major food category. That's about forty to 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:36.000 fifty percent of root crops, fruits and vegetables, about twenty 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.480 of oil seeds, meat and dairy products. About thirty five 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:44.520 percent of fish are lost or wasted annually. And that's 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.639 that's now. That's like with twenty one century technology for preservation, 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:52.640 cold storage, mechanized transport and all that. You know. This 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.840 this lines up nicely with a recent discussion we had 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.040 on our other podcast, Stuff to Blow your mind about 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:02.200 rats and how rat thrive on disruption and how they 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:06.120 have they have done amazingly well living in the shadow 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:09.840 of human civilization. And this this is one of the reasons, 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:13.000 oh exactly now that waste occurs at all kinds of 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:17.640 stages throughout the chain of supplying food. In more developed countries, 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:20.079 a lot of times there is less waste. A lot 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.880 of the waste takes place at the consumer side, including 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.600 like the leftovers on your plate that you scrape off 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.400 into the trash, waste produced during the food preparation process 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.040 in the kitchen, like peeling off totally edible bits of 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:35.960 food cutting off crusts, etcetera. Um, and then also just 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:39.040 the idea like less than perfect produce that sits unbought 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.840 at the market because of aesthetic defects. Yeah, speaking of 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.080 I remember correctly, there's like a box service you can 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:49.800 get now where it's just the ugly vegetables. Yeahah, like 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.440 someone said, hey, we're throwing all these ugly vegetables away. 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.360 We should be selling these two hipsters for an inflated price. 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.960 That's a great idea. Yeah, safe to eat, doesn't look 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:03.720 could bring it on. I I prefer funny looking carrots myself. 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:06.440 The more they look like like pants, the better I 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:10.240 like it too. Now, in the developing world, more food 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:13.600 loss occurs actually earlier in the supply chain, mostly due 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:17.520 to a lack of infrastructure for storing and transporting food 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:19.960 products in a way that preserves their quality. So like 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.400 a huge part of this food loss is due to spoilage, 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.000 food going bad, and much of the spoilage occurs early 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.560 in the supply chain because food rots and containers while 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:33.000 it's waiting to be shipped to market, or spoils in 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:35.640 the sun on the back of an unrefrigerated truck on 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:39.320 the way to a storage facility. UM. Food spoilage is 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:42.480 of course a double problem because on on one end, 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:44.600 you might say, the more minor end, of course, this 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:49.040 is a huge problem worldwide. It wastes valuable food resources 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:53.400 that could, if the distribution channels were working efficiently, get 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:55.799 to the people who need them, especially to hungry people. 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:58.520 But on the other end, of course, uh, if food 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.159 spoiled by micro organism Z is eaten, it can potentially 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.800 make you sick or kill you. And these are not 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:07.800 new problems. So today we're gonna be talking about an 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.479 invention that played a major role in the history of 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.920 this food supply chain and in preventing some of this 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:20.040 food waste along the distribution chain from you know, food 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:23.640 production to eating the food, and that invention is canning 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:27.039 the process of preserving foods by heating them in a 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:30.239 hermetically sealed container. I have to say I always enjoy 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:34.719 discussing hermetically sealed anything because it always brings to mind 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:39.159 like this phantom of of of like a like alchemy 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.520 and an actual hermit. I love it. Yeah, yeah, Because 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:45.599 of course, her hermetically sealed in this context means air tight. 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:49.120 Sealed air cannot penetrate. But of course it has the 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:53.440 other connotation of like hermetic philosophy, hermetic religion. All right, well, 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.760 before we get to the canning, though, we're gonna do 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:58.320 what we normally do. We're gonna talk about what came before, 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:02.280 what came before this technology, this food technology of canning, 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.640 and there was a lot that came before. If you 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:08.080 if you wanted to preserve food in the ancient world, 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.240 you had to turn to four different sources sort of 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:16.280 four different powers. Uh. This according to Brian M. Fagan, 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.919 author of the excellent The Seventy Great Inventions of the 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:24.159 Ancient World. He classifies them as snow, ice, smoke, and wind. 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.039 So let's start with the like the snow and the ice, 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:31.640 because that's probably the one of the ones. We have 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.760 some some some really robust evidence for Ice Age. Hunters 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.359 in what is now Ukraine use perma frost storage some 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:42.919 fourteen thousand years ago. We have evidence of this. They 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.800 would dig deep pits in the frozen tundra and they 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:49.320 would store mammoth flesh and other foods in there. Okay, 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.400 so this would have been, you said, during the Ice Age. 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:55.599 So this is when like the like the polar regions 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:58.479 that sort of extended down closer to the equator and 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:02.160 you had ice sheets and perma fross lower at lower latitudes. Yeah, 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:04.840 so you had a lot of basically, you had a 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:06.320 lot of ice on hand, you had a lot of 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:08.680 snow on hand, you had a lot of UH. You 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:11.960 had a cold environment that was readily available in which 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.600 to hide away your excess mammoth flesh for later. But 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.400 that's not the only environment which we saw this strategy 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.760 excel in modern day Syria. For example, ice house technology 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:27.760 goes back to at least BC, and it was also 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.560 well established in China by the seventh century BC. Now, 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.680 an ice house is a building design for storing ice 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:37.560 and UH and then storing things that need to be 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:40.480 cooled buy that ice. And we've touched on this a 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:44.520 bit in past episodes, so specifically our episode on air conditioned. 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:47.040 You know, how do you how do you store ice 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:49.200 and keep it cool? Yeah? And I think there were 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:52.720 some allegations that say, for example, in ancient Persia, you 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:55.920 could have sellers that were cooled by wind catchers and 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:59.600 cannots that would would stay very cold and you could 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.040 store you know, cold like foods or ice or whatever 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.680 in them. Yeah, but in the other cases you just 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:09.240 had access to say, mountain ice. Even we saw this 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.400 in the the Aztec world. The Aztecs would bring ice 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.320 down from the mountains. It would be carried down by runners, 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:17.920 and then it would be sold to, you know, members 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:21.440 of the of the royal houses, uh there in the market. 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.880 This allegedly happened in the ancient Roman world as well, right, Yeah, 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:28.800 and the Chinese utilized it as well. The the the 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.240 different ice houses that the Chinese used, you know, they 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:34.439 often had you know, ornate doors, they had a draining 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.160 system for when the ice is melting, and it would 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.200 be used as a place to store ice or even 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:43.160 a royal body after the the individual had passed away. 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:45.000 And by the way, all of this is one of 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.360 the reasons why the history of ice cream goes back, 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:50.800 you know, far further in time than I think a 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:53.439 lot of us might think. The Chinese, for instance, are 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.040 thought to have produced the earliest example of a sweet 0:08:56.120 --> 0:09:00.120 ice milk concoction as early as the seventh century PC. E. 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:02.640 When we're gonna do the full episode on ice cream, well, 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:04.040 we thought we were gonna have maybe a sponsor for 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.920 a little bit. We're like, bring us the ice cream sponsor. Yeah, 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.040 k bar, you're out there, hit us up. Yeah, we'll 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:11.920 do an ice cream episode tomorrow if you would like. 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.320 So that's ice and snow, But let's get to that 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:18.760 smoke and that wind. Meat. The drawing of meat has 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.520 also long been practiced, either drying meat in the sun 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:25.640 or drying it with smoke and uh and and ultimately 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:29.319 with with wind and smoke certainly goes back smoke smoke 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:32.040 curing goes back at least to the late ice age. 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.440 Salting would come in later, becoming an established technology by 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.920 the time of the Romans, and we touched on that 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:40.520 a little bit in our recent episode on Catchup. Sure, 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:44.360 but these technologies all alone only get you so far. 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.640 What you need is some sort of magical container, right, 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.360 something that preserves food within it without having to freeze 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.120 it or dry it out, to reduce it, to alter it, 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:57.640 you know, in some way shape or form, and and 0:09:57.360 --> 0:09:59.280 and and ideally do so in a way that like 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.360 truly laugh because a lot of these food preservation techniques 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:06.920 were discussing here, either they require ice to be continually 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:10.040 added to the ice house or even you know, a 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:12.360 salt cured meat is only going to last so long 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:16.800 that and I mean another concern is just the pleasure 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:20.880 people take in eating. I mean, to thoroughly salt meat 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:23.120 in order to preserve it. That will have some good 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.800 preservative properties and not a dent, but you know, mostly works. 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:30.520 But it changes that it changes the nature of the meat, 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:34.120 and it makes it very salty and dried out. It's 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:36.800 not like eating fresh meat. Yeah, I mean in the 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:40.120 same way that we often discuss cooking itself as a 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.240 partial digestion, like a pre digestion of the meat to 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:46.160 make it easier for our digestive systems. You might look 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:50.880 at preservation of these various foods is additional digestion that 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:54.199 in some cases can reduce some of the beneficial aspects 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:57.000 either uh, you know, from a you know, vitamin and 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:02.200 nutritional standpoint, or from just the experience of eating uh standpoint. Uh. 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.160 It further digested the food and and at the end 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.920 of that you might you know, grow tired of your 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:10.160 hardtack or whatever. I feel like one of the most 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.520 standard bits of like a slice of military life you 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:15.920 get when you look back over the centuries, like what 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:18.760 the soldiers are talking about and stuff. It's complaining about 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.960 the food. That's like so often what's going on even 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:25.680 as a technology advance is because certainly m you know, 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:27.920 a lot of jokes are often made about spam, right, 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:31.280 Spam is a canned meat that is ultimately, you know, 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.840 one of the hallmarks of the the age of canning, 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:37.400 which we'll we'll get to in a bit, but we 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:39.160 you know, we've touched on some of the ideas you know, 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.160 just about why one preserves food. Of the big one 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.360 is we have all this food now, but we can 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:47.360 only eat so much. Some of it's gonna spoil. How 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:48.960 do we say of that? Yeah, part of it is 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:53.320 just sort of top level flexibility within the supply chain, 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:55.960 Like if you can preserve the food, that gives you 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:58.120 more time to figure out where you're gonna send it, 0:11:58.160 --> 0:11:59.719 who you're going to sell it to, and all that 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.120 kind of stuff. If you know, you're talking about a 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:05.400 lot of fresh foods, that question is always an emergency. 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:08.600 You need to have the final destination figured out for 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:12.400 the food immediately. Yeah, But even on like a household level, right, 0:12:12.440 --> 0:12:15.000 it's like we have we just harvested, we have plenty 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.320 of food. Now we can have a big feast, but 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:19.800 it's about to be winter, and we need to continue 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.600 to eat through the winter. So we need a food 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:25.800 preservation system so that we can have that food to 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.040 to feast upon, were not to feast upond but just 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:31.760 to live upon heading into the new year. Right, So 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:35.640 there's like supply chain flexibility, there's getting through the winter months. 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:39.200 Another big one is, like we already hinted at this, 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.680 like armies and expeditions exactly if you're like on the move, Yeah, 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.240 if you're sending your army to conquer an adjacent kingdom 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.360 or sending ships to discover new lands. Um, you know, 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:51.280 ultimately we can look at those two things and say 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:54.040 they're basically the same. There's not really a lot of 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.320 difference in the way those two efforts shake out. But anyway, 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:01.080 it pays to have improved food store ridge technologies on 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:03.480 your side if you were engaging in any of those 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:07.120 long distance of sometimes long distance travel scenarios. Now, just 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:10.480 to provide a better idea of what was possible pre 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.720 canning and what the sort of the pre canning world was, Like, Uh, 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:17.120 I wanted to consider life aboard a seventeenth or eighteenth 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:20.960 century sailing ship. I was looking into some of this 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:22.440 we know, we all have sort of the idea in 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.560 our mind, right of sailors and going down, they're pulling up, 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.680 you know, a bucket of provisions. They're definitely eating hard tack. 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.520 Hopefully they have some limes or lemons to stave off scurvy. 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:35.840 But I was looking at an excellent website called Savoring 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:40.600 the Past, and they they had they managed to pull up, uh, 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.480 the list of provisions aboard a couple of different ships, 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.160 and one of them is a British sloop UH called 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:51.120 Alert from seventeen seventy seven, and it was a sloop 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:56.280 of sixty men, and it contained the following beef four 0:13:56.520 --> 0:14:00.360 d and sixty two pieces and six barrels, pork seven 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:03.480 hundred and seventy seven pieces and five barrels. Then twelve 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:07.880 barrels of beer, uh fifty six hogsheads, and twenty five 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:11.200 casks of eighteen gallons each of water. And then you had, 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:14.080 you know, like six thousand pounds of bread, You had 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:18.520 four pounds of butter, twenty bushels of oatmeal, sixteen bushels 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.560 of peas, thirteen hundred pounds of flour, eighty two pounds 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.720 of suet, two hundred pounds of raisins, four half hogsheads 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:29.400 of rum they don't have enough rub, I know, and 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.880 one hogshead of vinegars. Uh. So that meat that we 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.720 discussed up top, the beef, the pork, that's definitely salted meat, 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.560 which would not have had a tremendous shelf life either. 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:42.400 I was reading a cool source on this. Uh there's 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:46.280 Anatlas Obscure article titled the grim food served on the 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:49.800 seventeenth century sea voyages Wasn't all bad, And it's about 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:52.560 a Texas A and M University project that recreated some 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.400 of these foods using the pre canning food preservation techniques. 0:14:56.520 --> 0:14:59.240 You know, they would give you, say, a barrel of 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.600 salted beef. Oh, this reminds me of when we talked 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:06.320 about the life aboard the nuclear submarines that would spend 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:09.120 a lot of time. So like, early on the food 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.680 is really good, but things get weirder as time goes on. Yeah, 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.280 and that's still you've got to eat. And so you're 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:18.560 eating the weird salted meat. They pointed out quote after 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:22.360 two months, the salted beef smelled gnarly and didn't look fresh, 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.560 but it wasn't quite rotten either, So like that's kind of. 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.200 I think that's a good way of summing up where 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:32.160 you are with even like the height of pre canning, uh, 0:15:32.360 --> 0:15:35.520 preserved foods is that it might not be killing you, 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:40.040 it might not be actually rotten, but it's certainly not fresh. 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:42.720 And it's also again it is not going to last 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.160 for an extended period of time. And these were often 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:49.600 extended voyages. Um hard tack they mentioned though, which is 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:55.040 that dried bread type substance, essentially like hardened bread rock. Uh. 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:57.560 They said that that lasted pretty well though throughout the 0:15:57.640 --> 0:15:59.400 length of a voyage. So if nothing else, you could 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:01.280 count on your attack as long as you had enough 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:03.560 of it delicious. I guess you dip it in the 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:10.960 vinegar hardtack with suet and vinegar. Well, I mean part 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.160 of this too is that, of course then to carry 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:15.040 out these voyages, you know, and part of this is 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:16.920 just you don't It comes down to like how much 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:19.480 room you have to carry, uh, you know, additional provisions. 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:21.520 You know you're gonna have to acquire new food as 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:24.120 you go, right, and uh, that becomes one of the 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.200 difficulties of traveling. It committes one of the difficulties of 0:16:27.240 --> 0:16:30.240 traveling as a ship going from Port A to Port B. 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:32.400 It also is one of the problems of a of 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:36.080 an army, you know, transporting itself across the continent. Some 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:40.040 of the one of the friendlier phrases is that armies forage, right, 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.120 you know that they can't take all the food they 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:44.920 need with them. But a lot of times this spent, well, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:46.880 I mean, especially more in the past, it would mean 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.360 like seizing local farms, taking their crops and their livestock 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.080 and stuff, and saying, you know, we need to appropriate this. 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:55.120 All right, we need to take a quick break, but 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:57.720 we'll be right back with more on the invention of canning. 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:05.640 All right, we're back. So I think maybe a good 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:07.520 way to do this is to start with what we 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.359 know now about canning and then go back to before 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:15.320 the invention. Uh so, why does canned food resist spoilage? 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.320 Obviously there are multiple causes of spoilage. We know that, 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:21.680 like you know, light, exposure to light can affect foods, 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:25.880 exposure oxidization can affect foods. And these are different than 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:29.200 what we're focusing on. We're focusing on the microbial variety 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:33.639 of spoilage. Um, it's because spoilage is caused by micro 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:37.840 organisms like bacteria, yeasts, and molds. Now, of course, we 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.800 know that microorganisms like this are ubiquitous on planet Earth. 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:45.679 There everywhere. Even if you generally keep things clean in 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.119 your kitchen, there are some small numbers of micro organisms 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.560 in and on your food and all over the environment 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:56.040 in which that food is handled, prepared, and stored. And 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:59.800 over time those micro organisms that get on your food 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:03.800 get to feed and multiply they're releasing potentially toxic waste 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.800 products in the process. Uh, this is one thing that's 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.560 important to remember is that like cooking food. I think 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:12.800 sometimes people think, oh, you know, even if food is 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:14.879 a little bit old, I can cook it and that 0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:17.440 will kill all the microbes on it and then I'll 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.679 be safe. But microbes also release waste products that can 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.000 be harmful to you that are not destroyed by the 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:26.680 cooking process. But anyway to keep your food from spoiling, 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:29.920 you have to prevent the growth of microbes like fungal, 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:33.399 molds and bacteria. But since again these microbes are nearly 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.320 everywhere in our environment, what can you do? I think 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:39.760 canning is a very simple, elegant solution to that. And 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:42.840 the solution is you seal the food in an airtight 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:45.919 container so that nothing can get in or out, and 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.399 then you kill any living thing that's already inside the 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:52.760 container by heating the container to a temperature that nothing 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:57.000 relevant can survive. For example, the boiling point of water 0:18:57.040 --> 0:18:59.439 a hundred degreased C or two D and twelve degrees 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.960 fahrenheit uh, and the modern canning process often gets things 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.239 even hotter than that by the use of pressure kettles uh. 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:08.600 And you hold it at that temperature for a specified 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:11.160 length of time so you can be sure the temperature 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.200 is permeated through the whole thing and it has killed 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:18.280 anything that's in there. When done properly, canning can preserve 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.600 food for an extremely long time. In fact, though we 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:25.240 are not recommending you eat old canned food, as long 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.400 as the can is not breached in any way, properly 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:32.360 canned goods should resist spoilage basically indefinitely, Like if if 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.800 a can of corn was heated correctly and the air 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:38.879 tight seal has never been broken, it should, in theory, 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:42.040 still be safe to eat decades later, though the taste 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.320 and the texture of the food inside can can and 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:48.080 almost certainly will deteriorate with time. Just one real world 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.879 example of this I want to read from an article 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:53.880 in the Sioux City Journal by Terry Turner from August. 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:59.000 Turner is describing the nineteenth century wreck of a steamboat 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:02.359 called the Bertry and the Bertrand sank in the Missouri 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.600 River after hitting a submerged log on April first, eighteen 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:10.200 sixty five. Uh and the boat sank within ten to 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:12.640 fifteen minutes of the impact, meaning there was no time 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.879 to offload its cargo, which included many canned goods and 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:21.200 Turner rights quote. Canned goods removed from the shipwreck were 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:25.720 tested in nineteen seventy four by the National Food Processors Association. 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:32.000 The cans contained such things as brandied peaches, oysters, plum, tomatoes, honey, 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:36.439 and mixed vegetables. The test determined that although the appearance, smell, 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:40.000 and vitamin content of the food had deteriorated, it was 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.440 all still safe to eat. Oh man, there's nothing like 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.280 a hundred year old can of oysters. Yeah, I mean 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.159 that does sound pretty nasty, even if it was ruled safe. 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:51.920 Now again, we are not advising you to eat one 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:55.520 hundred year old canned food because there could be risks 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:57.920 of for example, the air tight seal and the can 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:01.600 being breached in ways that aren't vous to you. The 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:04.440 most common warning signs that the can has been breached 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:09.800 in some way are leaking, rust or especially bulging cans 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:13.919 do not even go near that. Dents could also be 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:16.560 a sign of worry, but then again, slightly dented cans 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:20.880 are usually safe. Um. There's no there's no single rule 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:22.760 that you can always look at a can and know 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.480 for sure. But generally, if most food hasn't been breached, 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.520 the airtight seal hasn't been broken, and it was it 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.280 was heated properly in the first place, it's good stuff. 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:36.159 I was even reading another article about a team that 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:39.240 was exploring somewhere in the Arctic and they came across 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:42.120 like decades old cans that had been left there by 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:44.879 a previous expedition and found that they were still safe 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:49.719 to eat. Um. So, when considered as an invention, canning, 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:53.240 of course is more of a process than a material product. 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:56.480 It's not all that much that's really particular about the 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:59.760 design of the can, though those the word can design 0:21:59.800 --> 0:22:02.320 and vatitions that came along in the history of canning. 0:22:02.720 --> 0:22:05.320 I think the main things to consider here that canning 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:09.760 involves knowledge of what types of containers are appropriate, the 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:12.480 fact that they must be sealed airtight and how to 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:15.639 seal them, the fact that they must be heated, and 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:18.959 knowledge of what temperature they must be heated too, and 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:21.560 the time that they must be kept at that temperature. 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:23.919 I should also throw in that, you know, you hear 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:26.800 talk about canning, and uh, you know, I've heard talk 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:29.080 about canning my whole life, and I have to admit 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:30.479 that for a long time, I just assume we call 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:34.120 it canning because you put things in cans, right, But 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:37.439 that's not where the word word canning comes from. It 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:41.200 comes from the Greek canastron, which is in the Latin 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:45.159 h canistra. It's a wicker basket used for holding bread, 0:22:45.240 --> 0:22:50.120 fruit and flowers. Beautiful. Try canning in a wicker basket, though, 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:52.600 and I think you'll encounter problems. Yeah, I just didn't. 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.040 Didn't work all that well. Now, before we get to 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:58.960 the most commonly cited inventor of canning, I think we 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.280 should mention that there was some work preceding the invention 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:05.040 of canning that sort of led up to it, especially 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:08.439 in the early So the invention was generally considered to 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.199 be in the early eighteen hundreds. But one example of 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:15.159 work leading up to Canning is the are the experiments 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:20.800 of the Italian physiologist Lazaro Spalonzani fantastic multi syllabic name 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:25.520 spalon Zanni. He lives seventeen twenty nine to seventeen nine. 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:30.160 And spalon Zani was opposed to some of the spontaneous 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:34.240 generation theories that were popular in his time. Spontaneous generation, 0:23:34.320 --> 0:23:38.479 of course, concerned various ideas about ways that life forms 0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:41.800 would sort of arise from vital atoms that were there 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.280 in the soil or in the water. Uh. It was 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:48.080 it was against the idea that there were life forms 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.240 all over the place that were microscopic and would multiply 0:23:52.000 --> 0:23:55.280 uh and of course uh. And spalon Zanni was supporting 0:23:55.320 --> 0:23:58.680 the theories of the early microscopist Anthony van Lewin Hook 0:23:59.240 --> 0:24:02.440 UH when these ideas where that the tiny cells seen 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:06.120 floating around in pond water were in fact life forms 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:10.760 which gave rise to macroscopic effects through their multiplication. And 0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:13.879 in a group of experiments in the eighteenth century, spalen 0:24:14.000 --> 0:24:17.159 Zani showed you could fill up a glass vial with 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:20.520 gravy and if it was sealed air tight and then 0:24:20.640 --> 0:24:24.120 boiled for some reason afterwards, it did not show any 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:28.080 signs of spoilage. Thus, he concluded from the great gravy 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:32.959 experiments that under normal non sealed conditions, microbial life forms 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.639 must somehow enter the gravy through the air and cause 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:39.879 the spoilage that we recognize in most food that sits 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:42.399 around for a while. So he basically had like a 0:24:42.480 --> 0:24:46.200 miasma theory of how the gravy shooter was going to 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:49.119 be corrupted. Well, no, I mean I think he. I 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:51.960 don't know to what degree it overlapped with me asthma, 0:24:52.000 --> 0:24:55.160 because miasma theory was absolutely still in vogue at the time, 0:24:55.200 --> 0:24:57.720 Like we wouldn't get to the work of say John 0:24:57.760 --> 0:25:00.960 snow and and uh and Louis pass Stewar until later 0:25:01.000 --> 0:25:03.960 in the eighteen hundreds, you know, cementing the idea that like, 0:25:04.359 --> 0:25:06.879 there are these micro organisms out there, they are the 0:25:06.920 --> 0:25:10.960 cause of infectious diseases. Uh. But spalon Zanni I think 0:25:11.040 --> 0:25:13.320 was sort of on the right track. Uh. And I 0:25:13.680 --> 0:25:17.320 do think he attributed it to life forms, tiny microscopic 0:25:17.400 --> 0:25:20.280 life forms, and not necessarily say the fumes coming off 0:25:20.320 --> 0:25:23.840 of rotting vegetation, as many miasma theorists. But he realized 0:25:23.840 --> 0:25:27.439 that the the these organisms were going to reach the 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:30.239 gravy shooter via the air right if you couldn't, if 0:25:30.280 --> 0:25:33.200 you didn't seal it off and sterilize it with heat, 0:25:33.640 --> 0:25:36.760 then they would eventually get in there and spoil it. 0:25:36.800 --> 0:25:40.399 But he did not invent anything cooking wise or food 0:25:40.440 --> 0:25:43.600 storage wise from this insight. But that brings us to 0:25:43.640 --> 0:25:47.000 one Nicolas a Pair, that's right, Nicholas a Pair who 0:25:47.000 --> 0:25:50.879 lived seventeen forty nine through eighteen forty one. He was 0:25:51.800 --> 0:25:54.240 accounts apparently differ whether he was the son of a 0:25:54.320 --> 0:25:57.760 woolcomber or a hotel keeper, and as possible that you 0:25:57.800 --> 0:26:01.000 know his his father was both. But he started work 0:26:01.000 --> 0:26:04.600 early on in life as an apprentice cook, so he 0:26:04.600 --> 0:26:06.720 he was a chef, he was a distiller, he was 0:26:06.760 --> 0:26:09.840 a confectioner. But through all this time he experimented with 0:26:09.880 --> 0:26:13.720 the preservation of food and UH and he especially got 0:26:13.720 --> 0:26:17.440 interested in it after the French Directory offered a prize 0:26:18.119 --> 0:26:22.560 in anyone who could develop and an improved method of 0:26:22.600 --> 0:26:25.679 food preservation, and so he set to work on the 0:26:25.720 --> 0:26:29.160 problem for something like fourteen years. And the French Directory 0:26:29.200 --> 0:26:32.119 issue I think was mainly military focused. Right. It's the 0:26:32.160 --> 0:26:35.320 idea of how can we get well preserved foods that 0:26:35.440 --> 0:26:38.200 still taste good and don't go bad and make people 0:26:38.240 --> 0:26:41.359 sick for the navy, right though also, I mean this 0:26:41.440 --> 0:26:43.879 was the period of the revolution and the Revolutionary wars. 0:26:44.080 --> 0:26:46.440 There was there were food shortages as well, so there 0:26:46.520 --> 0:26:49.560 was you know, the focus was also domestic, you know, 0:26:49.680 --> 0:26:52.040 just you know, whatever we can do to preserve food 0:26:52.040 --> 0:26:57.040 better to to survive these uh you know, these crunches. Yeah. 0:26:57.080 --> 0:27:00.280 And then also we we mentioned the similarity but between 0:27:00.320 --> 0:27:03.760 military needs and like, uh, the expeditions that are going 0:27:03.800 --> 0:27:06.119 on at the time. Like many early stories about the 0:27:06.119 --> 0:27:09.120 successes of canned food mentioned it being used on, for example, 0:27:09.200 --> 0:27:13.000 polar explorations. In the early eighteen hundreds, Sir John Ross, 0:27:13.040 --> 0:27:15.800 the Arctic explorer, took canned food with him on his 0:27:15.840 --> 0:27:19.399 expedition to the Arctic. Otto van Kutzebue also did the 0:27:19.400 --> 0:27:22.320 same while searching for the Northwest Passage. So what a 0:27:22.400 --> 0:27:25.719 pair did is he developed a method using glass containers, 0:27:25.880 --> 0:27:29.480 wire and wire reinforced corks sealing wax in a bath 0:27:29.520 --> 0:27:32.520 of boiling water. And he tested this over the years 0:27:32.520 --> 0:27:35.680 on a number of different types of foods, including soups 0:27:36.080 --> 0:27:39.200 and what was, you know, essentially a hermetically sealed bottle. 0:27:39.480 --> 0:27:42.280 He was then able to claim an eighteen ten prize 0:27:42.280 --> 0:27:45.639 of twelve thousand francs with this method. And this was 0:27:45.680 --> 0:27:48.600 all published in the Art of Preserving All Kinds of 0:27:48.640 --> 0:27:53.480 Animal and Vegetable Substances for several years nice for several years. Now. 0:27:53.520 --> 0:27:56.840 This is interesting because so this guy who is credited 0:27:56.840 --> 0:28:00.560 with inventing canning here was not putting things the metal 0:28:00.720 --> 0:28:03.840 cans we think of today. He was more like, uh, 0:28:03.960 --> 0:28:08.160 ceiling and sterilizing soup in wine bottles, like glass bottles, 0:28:08.280 --> 0:28:11.399 right like some of the ones you see pictured in 0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:15.320 the history books. They essentially look like dark, old timy 0:28:15.440 --> 0:28:19.520 milk glasses, you know, with the with the wide brim, 0:28:19.600 --> 0:28:23.000 and U fill that with soup, seal it up, use 0:28:23.119 --> 0:28:25.920 this method and then it would be good to go. Uh. 0:28:25.960 --> 0:28:29.080 These were the four steps that he outlined in the 0:28:29.200 --> 0:28:32.400 Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances 0:28:32.400 --> 0:28:34.520 for several years. Uh, and it's basically what we've been 0:28:34.560 --> 0:28:36.960 talking about. Step one to place in the bottles or 0:28:37.000 --> 0:28:40.160 glass jars the substances to be preserved. Step two to 0:28:40.280 --> 0:28:42.880 cork these different vessels with the greatest care, because success 0:28:42.960 --> 0:28:46.160 chiefly depends on the closing. Okay, step three to submit 0:28:46.240 --> 0:28:49.240 these substances thus enclosed to the action of boiling water 0:28:49.320 --> 0:28:52.080 in a water bath for a more or less time 0:28:52.120 --> 0:28:54.479 according to their nature, and in the manner that I 0:28:54.520 --> 0:28:57.480 shall indicate for each kind of food. And then step 0:28:57.520 --> 0:29:00.680 four to remove the bottles from the water at at 0:29:00.680 --> 0:29:03.960 the time prescribed. So he got that, he got this 0:29:04.040 --> 0:29:05.719 prize money and he put it to you. So he 0:29:05.880 --> 0:29:09.800 established the first commercial cannery with this money in eighteen twelve, 0:29:10.360 --> 0:29:13.680 and the house of a pair operated until nineteen thirty three. 0:29:14.160 --> 0:29:16.760 And he can't all manner of food, so including at 0:29:16.760 --> 0:29:21.400 one point a whole sheep for purely promotional purposes. I know, 0:29:21.480 --> 0:29:23.720 I was looking for, like at least an illustration of this, 0:29:23.760 --> 0:29:27.400 but I couldn't find anything. He also applied himself to 0:29:27.520 --> 0:29:31.000 other inventions, including he a perfection of the autoclave, which 0:29:31.040 --> 0:29:34.880 is a device that uses you know, boiling conditions to 0:29:34.880 --> 0:29:41.160 sterilize instruments, the boulong tablet booleyon tablet for making soups. 0:29:41.240 --> 0:29:44.280 Yeah yeah, okay, so like uh oh, I always wonder 0:29:44.360 --> 0:29:45.920 how they made the earliest ones of those what do 0:29:45.960 --> 0:29:49.400 you just boil down broth until you've got a solid Yeah? Basically, 0:29:49.400 --> 0:29:50.880 I mean we have to remember the like broth is 0:29:50.960 --> 0:29:53.480 essentially what you have like a turkey carcass. After you've 0:29:53.520 --> 0:29:55.200 gotten the meat off of it, you put the carcass, 0:29:55.400 --> 0:29:57.720 what's left of it in the pot. You just boil 0:29:57.760 --> 0:29:59.760 it until you have the stock and then the stock 0:29:59.800 --> 0:30:02.280 can to utilize. But then if you reduce the stock 0:30:02.800 --> 0:30:05.480 down to it's like there, uh, you know, you know, 0:30:05.520 --> 0:30:08.800 completely dried essentials. You have that tablet uh. And that's 0:30:08.880 --> 0:30:11.520 what he came up with. Um. And then he he 0:30:11.560 --> 0:30:15.240 also worked on a non acid gelatin extraction method, which 0:30:15.280 --> 0:30:17.720 is you know, maybe less exciting now, I know what 0:30:17.760 --> 0:30:20.720 you're thinking, especially if you've listened to past episodes. Okay, 0:30:20.720 --> 0:30:24.600 sure the French celebrate a pair, but what what what 0:30:24.680 --> 0:30:29.120 he did? Wasn't that revolutionary? Right? Surely other individuals and 0:30:29.120 --> 0:30:32.440 and other nations make claims on canning technology. Yeah, this 0:30:32.480 --> 0:30:34.960 is very often the case. Even when there's usually an 0:30:35.000 --> 0:30:38.960 identified inventor of a technology, they weren't like it didn't 0:30:38.960 --> 0:30:41.480 come out of the blue. Usually Yeah, and you know, 0:30:41.560 --> 0:30:44.080 even though it wasn't the you know, the sort of 0:30:44.160 --> 0:30:47.080 hyper connected world we have today, you still had people 0:30:47.080 --> 0:30:50.560 communicating with each other throughout a country and then cross country. 0:30:50.640 --> 0:30:53.520 So I was reading a piece on this from J. C. Graham. 0:30:53.520 --> 0:30:55.960 This was published in nine in the Journal of the 0:30:56.040 --> 0:30:58.959 Royal Society of Medicine, titled The French Connection in the 0:30:58.960 --> 0:31:02.640 Early History of can Um. I like that he put 0:31:02.680 --> 0:31:05.640 the movie reference in there, but he writes that yes, uh, 0:31:05.680 --> 0:31:08.400 you know, based on what we know is su does 0:31:08.480 --> 0:31:11.960 that the theory was widely known before the time of 0:31:12.000 --> 0:31:14.360 a pair. However, he points out that a Pair went 0:31:14.400 --> 0:31:18.760 above and beyond by testing different foods to figure out 0:31:18.760 --> 0:31:20.800 how long he needed to heat them. Even though he 0:31:20.800 --> 0:31:23.920 didn't understand the reason for air tight containers, he'd figured 0:31:23.960 --> 0:31:26.600 out through trial and error and experimentation that it was essential. 0:31:26.720 --> 0:31:29.680 So even if you know, there were other people who 0:31:29.880 --> 0:31:32.440 were onto something, they realized, oh, there's there's something to 0:31:32.640 --> 0:31:37.520 this boiling ceiling and boiling of the container. A pair 0:31:37.960 --> 0:31:41.200 really did the leg work, you know, spent again allegedly 0:31:41.280 --> 0:31:45.040 fourteen years uh figuring it out and devising his own 0:31:45.080 --> 0:31:48.480 recipes for how long things needed to be uh, you know, 0:31:48.520 --> 0:31:50.760 exposed to the heat and then and then you know, 0:31:51.080 --> 0:31:53.280 how exactly to go about it like he took more 0:31:53.360 --> 0:31:55.960 or less a scientific approach to it. But what but 0:31:56.000 --> 0:31:58.080 it was very different than like what we saw with 0:31:58.320 --> 0:32:02.080 Small and Zanni. Right, Small and Zanni got some correct 0:32:02.120 --> 0:32:07.080 approximation of the underlying reasoning, right, But but a pair 0:32:07.160 --> 0:32:10.120 did not. A pair just figured out what worked right. 0:32:10.200 --> 0:32:13.760 And again he didn't really understand why it worked. You know, 0:32:13.800 --> 0:32:17.160 the theory of spontaneous generation still still held sway at 0:32:17.200 --> 0:32:20.760 that time, and Pasteur's revelations about the role of microbes 0:32:20.760 --> 0:32:23.400 and decomposition would come some fifty years later. But Graham 0:32:23.480 --> 0:32:28.760 considered that his method was keeping decay at bay, and 0:32:28.760 --> 0:32:30.560 and that was enough. And he had It's like, he 0:32:30.640 --> 0:32:33.920 had the recipe for it, he had the instructions, and 0:32:34.720 --> 0:32:37.880 time after time he was able to prove that it worked. 0:32:37.960 --> 0:32:41.200 So a pair didn't necessarily have the insight about microbial life, 0:32:41.200 --> 0:32:43.720 but he knew that, like you can't let air get 0:32:43.800 --> 0:32:46.640 in right after you've heated it up. Yeah, he kind of, 0:32:46.800 --> 0:32:49.400 I mean essentially had kind of like the workhorse like 0:32:49.680 --> 0:32:52.960 kitchen knowledge of how this was gonna work. Like he 0:32:53.000 --> 0:32:55.000 didn't have to explain that, he didn't need to know 0:32:55.040 --> 0:32:58.479 how the microbes worked. He knew that if you if 0:32:58.480 --> 0:33:01.320 you follow these steps, then yes you could. You could 0:33:01.320 --> 0:33:03.480 store away a soup and a bottle and it would 0:33:03.520 --> 0:33:07.120 remain uncorrupted for a lengthy period of time. Now, I'm 0:33:07.120 --> 0:33:10.240 sure once we had a more fully realized and accurate 0:33:10.320 --> 0:33:14.520 theory of microbial decomposition and food spoilage, we could pair 0:33:14.560 --> 0:33:17.760 that with our like industrial and technical knowledge to to 0:33:17.800 --> 0:33:21.160 get better results overall. Oh. Absolutely, yeah. I mean it's 0:33:21.200 --> 0:33:25.360 the it's canning and fruit food preservation in general, and progresses. 0:33:25.440 --> 0:33:29.880 It greatly benefits from that new information. Right. A big 0:33:30.000 --> 0:33:32.400 point there, of course, being Louis pasteur as you mentioned, 0:33:32.480 --> 0:33:35.160 the pasteurization of of milk. All Right, I think we 0:33:35.200 --> 0:33:36.760 need to do a quick break and when we come 0:33:36.760 --> 0:33:38.640 back we can talk a little bit about the early 0:33:38.720 --> 0:33:47.080 years of canning and some of the legacy. Alright, we're back, 0:33:47.240 --> 0:33:49.240 So a number of you might be wondering, all right, 0:33:49.280 --> 0:33:51.960 we're talking about canning, and we're talking about bottles full 0:33:51.960 --> 0:33:55.440 of soup and whole sheep and so forth, but we're 0:33:55.480 --> 0:33:59.200 not talking about tin cans. Oh I'm sorry. I'm trying 0:33:59.200 --> 0:34:01.840 to formulate some kind of like Scottish accent joke about 0:34:01.840 --> 0:34:04.760 a ship in a bottle shape and a bottle. Never mind, 0:34:05.360 --> 0:34:07.120 I think it needs some work, but we can get there. 0:34:07.200 --> 0:34:10.640 We can get there with that joke. Okay. So basically, yeah, 0:34:10.719 --> 0:34:13.399 a Pair's book comes out and it's it's a big hit. 0:34:13.400 --> 0:34:17.840 It's such a big hit that Englishman Peter Durand buys 0:34:17.840 --> 0:34:20.440 a copy of it, uh and brings it to England 0:34:20.560 --> 0:34:23.400 in eighteen ten, and then seeks and obtains a patent 0:34:23.840 --> 0:34:27.400 on on an exact copy of a Pair's method. He 0:34:27.480 --> 0:34:30.600 obtains the like the English patent for the method h 0:34:30.640 --> 0:34:33.080 and he mentions in the application that he obtained the 0:34:33.120 --> 0:34:36.160 idea from a friend traveling abroad. So he's not he's 0:34:36.160 --> 0:34:38.920 not too cagy about the fact that he basically just 0:34:39.360 --> 0:34:42.480 took the idea and he's just going to patent it 0:34:42.560 --> 0:34:46.680 for use in England. But as J. C. Graham points out, 0:34:47.520 --> 0:34:50.920 he covered his grounds in the patent to include quote 0:34:50.960 --> 0:34:54.719 bottles or other vessels of glass, pottery, tin, or other 0:34:54.800 --> 0:34:59.640 metals or fit materials. So basically, you know, he he 0:35:00.000 --> 0:35:03.520 had an eye on the financial possibilities here, like he 0:35:03.600 --> 0:35:06.080 was kind of a patent troll. I guess he would say, 0:35:06.360 --> 0:35:07.880 you know, he was like, oh, this was this was 0:35:07.920 --> 0:35:10.400 working great in France. I'm gonna get it in England, 0:35:10.440 --> 0:35:12.440 and I'm also going to add in some additional language 0:35:12.480 --> 0:35:14.640 to ensure that we have, you know, all the various 0:35:14.760 --> 0:35:18.960 UH material iterations of this covered. But those material changes 0:35:19.000 --> 0:35:22.120 would actually come through in in the big early successful 0:35:22.200 --> 0:35:25.880 models of kens, which were the tin coated iron can, 0:35:25.920 --> 0:35:29.320 which replaced a pair of sealed glass jars for industrial 0:35:29.320 --> 0:35:32.520 production exactly now. So so I guess you could say 0:35:32.560 --> 0:35:35.399 that Durant saw the future like he at least knew 0:35:35.480 --> 0:35:37.200 like these are some of the materials that could be 0:35:37.239 --> 0:35:39.279 the future of canning. I'm going to include them in 0:35:39.280 --> 0:35:42.480 the patent. But then he was himself not an inventor. 0:35:42.560 --> 0:35:45.040 He was a merchant. So after receiving the patent, he 0:35:45.200 --> 0:35:48.800 promptly sold it off for thousand pounds and the buyers 0:35:48.880 --> 0:35:52.480 were Brian Donkin and John Hall, and they set up 0:35:52.480 --> 0:35:55.799 a commercial cannery in eighteen thirteen and it took off. 0:35:56.280 --> 0:35:59.640 And meanwhile Durand said about obtaining his patent in America 0:36:00.040 --> 0:36:04.160 so you could continue this this process. In his book Connections, 0:36:04.239 --> 0:36:07.719 James Burke at this point talks about UH an influential 0:36:07.760 --> 0:36:10.040 moment in the early days of canning, when some canned 0:36:10.120 --> 0:36:12.920 meats were served to the royal family and then I 0:36:12.920 --> 0:36:15.200 think it a maybe at a feast at the Duke 0:36:15.239 --> 0:36:18.480 of York was hosting or something, and apparently the royals 0:36:18.520 --> 0:36:21.160 greatly enjoyed the canned meats that were served to them, 0:36:21.200 --> 0:36:23.080 and this was like a big thumbs up for the 0:36:23.080 --> 0:36:25.759 new technology. Well, you have to you have to think 0:36:25.800 --> 0:36:27.799 about it. I mean, we've been eating out of cans 0:36:27.800 --> 0:36:30.520 our whole life, so there's not really much novelty to 0:36:30.719 --> 0:36:35.040 it for the most part. But imagine encountering a can 0:36:35.040 --> 0:36:38.200 of food for the first time. Here's this sealed object 0:36:38.760 --> 0:36:41.680 and uh, when it is opened up, there is a 0:36:41.800 --> 0:36:45.760 rich soup inside. Uh, there's a there's a prepared meal 0:36:45.920 --> 0:36:48.719 inside this object. I mean, it's It's one of those 0:36:48.719 --> 0:36:51.280 things that makes me wonder. Generally, was food just really 0:36:51.360 --> 0:36:54.520 bad and the past I don't know, But maybe maybe 0:36:54.520 --> 0:36:56.880 these early canned foods were just really good. There is 0:36:56.920 --> 0:36:58.719 such a thing as good canned food. I think we 0:36:58.800 --> 0:37:02.360 often associate can food with being bad, but it doesn't 0:37:02.360 --> 0:37:05.239 have to be whereight, I mean, because the thing is 0:37:05.280 --> 0:37:09.760 like canned food. Processed food does not begin with canning, 0:37:10.040 --> 0:37:13.760 but but canning does bring about a revolution in processed food. 0:37:14.200 --> 0:37:19.239 And you and and becomes like a hallmark of processed food. Uh. 0:37:19.280 --> 0:37:21.680 You know. But that being said, there are varying degrees 0:37:21.880 --> 0:37:24.680 of of quality to be had there and there there 0:37:24.760 --> 0:37:26.479 is such thing as a good can soup. I would 0:37:26.480 --> 0:37:29.280 presume that if they were serving it to the royal family, 0:37:29.680 --> 0:37:31.200 they would have they would have picked a good one, 0:37:31.200 --> 0:37:34.040 they would have marked. I was like, this is the one, Uh, 0:37:34.080 --> 0:37:35.600 this is the can that needs to be put in 0:37:35.600 --> 0:37:38.960 front of the queen. It was in fact Campbell's split 0:37:39.000 --> 0:37:41.880 pe and Ham. But yeah, one thing you mentioned is 0:37:41.920 --> 0:37:44.840 that Duran was looking to obtain a patent in America, 0:37:44.920 --> 0:37:48.480 and of course America. In America, shortly after this, canning 0:37:48.520 --> 0:37:53.120 became huge business. And generally everywhere, like anywhere you were 0:37:53.160 --> 0:37:55.960 producing food, there's a high probability that you're also gonna 0:37:55.960 --> 0:37:58.880 have a cannary because you need to to to actually 0:37:59.160 --> 0:38:02.239 you know, ship the the product out. But you look 0:38:02.280 --> 0:38:05.440 back at particularly with America, you look back at a 0:38:05.560 --> 0:38:09.799 cookbooks from say around nineteen and you have books like 0:38:09.880 --> 0:38:13.000 how to Make Good Things to Eat, uh and and 0:38:13.080 --> 0:38:17.399 it's mostly recipes for how to utilize canned goods. But then, 0:38:17.440 --> 0:38:19.120 on the other hand, canning wasn't just a way of 0:38:19.160 --> 0:38:21.960 obtaining commercial foods. It wasn't just a way of of 0:38:22.000 --> 0:38:24.920 obtaining foods that came from over there. No, it was 0:38:25.000 --> 0:38:30.480 also a breakthrough in in household food preservation. Uh, you know, 0:38:31.120 --> 0:38:33.080 a way to preserve your own food, but then also 0:38:33.200 --> 0:38:36.560 to engage in like minor food trading and selling in 0:38:36.600 --> 0:38:41.640 your own community. Consider canned fruit preserves and jellies Household 0:38:41.640 --> 0:38:46.359 Methods of Preparation from nineteen o four by Maria PARLOA. Uh, 0:38:46.560 --> 0:38:48.680 there was just another cookbook that I ran across, and 0:38:48.719 --> 0:38:52.080 it's all about ways to can, ways to preserve food 0:38:52.160 --> 0:38:55.080 in your house. Uh. And I don't know about you, 0:38:55.120 --> 0:38:57.400 but I mean I I grew up around canning. Like 0:38:57.480 --> 0:39:00.920 canning was always occurring, either with my grandparents or my 0:39:01.000 --> 0:39:04.280 aunts or my my mom would can stuff, and uh, 0:39:04.280 --> 0:39:06.560 it was just it was part of the tradition of life. 0:39:07.000 --> 0:39:09.000 I wish i'd been around it more. I mean, I 0:39:09.040 --> 0:39:11.279 love those kind of traditions. No, we we didn't do 0:39:11.320 --> 0:39:13.840 it a lot in my household. But I want to 0:39:13.840 --> 0:39:17.200 come back to home canning because I think, uh, that's 0:39:17.239 --> 0:39:20.080 an interesting development in this process because what you see 0:39:20.120 --> 0:39:27.000 early on is like canning begins as this very centralized activity, 0:39:27.200 --> 0:39:29.600 which is for like the needs of the state, right, 0:39:29.600 --> 0:39:31.719 you know, you've got the state prize paying out for 0:39:31.880 --> 0:39:35.239 But of course, gradually over time it becomes like industrial 0:39:35.280 --> 0:39:38.719 products for the consumer and then finally democratized to something 0:39:38.719 --> 0:39:40.399 you can do in your own kitchen, which is only 0:39:40.400 --> 0:39:43.880 fair because the need for the reservation of food and 0:39:43.920 --> 0:39:46.719 the various some methods to preserve it like that was 0:39:46.760 --> 0:39:51.600 a pre state um initiative in human civilization. Oh, of course, 0:39:51.880 --> 0:39:53.520 But I want to talk a little bit about I 0:39:53.600 --> 0:39:56.840 mentioned James Burke writing about canning and connections. There's a 0:39:56.840 --> 0:39:59.960 section where he talks about several problems encountered by the 0:40:00.000 --> 0:40:03.560 earliest consumer canned goods. Uh So, First of all, you 0:40:03.600 --> 0:40:06.759 had difficulty of production that like he talks about the 0:40:06.760 --> 0:40:10.360 first canned goods were made with these production methods that 0:40:10.400 --> 0:40:13.160 would allow each cannery worker to produce only about tin 0:40:13.320 --> 0:40:16.960 cans of food per day uh so. So yeah, and 0:40:17.239 --> 0:40:19.719 one thing that flowed from that is that there were 0:40:19.800 --> 0:40:23.600 high costs. Uh so, Like he says, the first canned 0:40:23.600 --> 0:40:27.319 foods that reached shops in England around eighteen thirty or 0:40:27.360 --> 0:40:32.680 so included products like tomatoes, sardines, and peas, and high 0:40:32.760 --> 0:40:36.760 price here was a significant barrier to adoption. Burke sites 0:40:36.800 --> 0:40:39.759 early prices in the eighteen thirties, when a can of 0:40:39.840 --> 0:40:43.359 soup sold for over seven and a halfpence. And I'll 0:40:43.360 --> 0:40:46.760 contextualize these prices in a second, a can of corned 0:40:46.840 --> 0:40:49.800 beef for eight and a halfpence, a can of salmon 0:40:49.880 --> 0:40:53.440 for eleven and a halfpence. And for comparison, Burke says 0:40:53.480 --> 0:40:55.919 that at the same time, an English family could rent 0:40:56.000 --> 0:40:58.680 a house for about twelve and a halfpence a week, 0:40:59.280 --> 0:41:02.360 so a can of corned beef is like two thirds 0:41:02.480 --> 0:41:05.640 of a week's rent. On the other hand, when we 0:41:05.680 --> 0:41:08.680 think about cans, you're probably picturing the modern standard, like 0:41:08.760 --> 0:41:11.880 fifteen ounce can, the kind that fits easily in one hand. 0:41:12.320 --> 0:41:15.560 I'm not positive, but I think these prices Burke is 0:41:15.600 --> 0:41:18.600 siting are referring to larger cans, which were very common 0:41:18.640 --> 0:41:21.719 early on, more like the size of a paint can. So, 0:41:22.000 --> 0:41:24.080 you know, paint can worth of corned beef, is that 0:41:24.120 --> 0:41:26.279 worth two thirds of a week's rent? I don't know. 0:41:26.320 --> 0:41:28.840 It still sounds pretty steep. Yeah, you can spice it 0:41:28.920 --> 0:41:30.960 up a little bit, you know, I don't have to 0:41:31.000 --> 0:41:34.680 just eat straight corned beef for every meal. But yeah, 0:41:34.680 --> 0:41:36.359 it also gets down to the fact that, like, this 0:41:36.400 --> 0:41:38.080 would have been more of it. This is more of 0:41:38.080 --> 0:41:40.560 a specialized product. Early on, it had to either be 0:41:40.800 --> 0:41:45.120 for like your your voyage to the edge of the 0:41:45.160 --> 0:41:48.960 threshold of human civilization, or it was something that you 0:41:49.000 --> 0:41:50.920 would eat because you were you know, it was a 0:41:50.960 --> 0:41:53.440 novelty and you could afford it. Right. One more funny 0:41:53.440 --> 0:41:56.000 fact is that Burke mentions early cans had to be 0:41:56.040 --> 0:42:00.520 open with tools like a hammer and chisel. But then 0:42:00.560 --> 0:42:04.400 also you had factors early on that still affect certain 0:42:04.400 --> 0:42:07.960 products today. I mean, some foods work way better canned 0:42:08.040 --> 0:42:12.240 than others. Right, most people are totally cool with canned beans, 0:42:12.280 --> 0:42:14.000 but there are a lot of people who don't love 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:17.680 canned peas. Like, what's the difference there, Well, the sealed 0:42:17.719 --> 0:42:20.960 containers have to be boiled in order to be sterilized, right, 0:42:21.239 --> 0:42:26.200 And some foods just deal better with extreme exposure to 0:42:26.280 --> 0:42:29.360 prolonged heat and a sealed container than others do. And 0:42:29.360 --> 0:42:31.560 then I mean, it's also worth thinking about the fact 0:42:31.560 --> 0:42:35.200 that some canned foods were themselves already had already experienced 0:42:35.239 --> 0:42:37.319 preservation by another method. You know, if you're dealing with 0:42:37.360 --> 0:42:40.520 something that is pickled, for instance, sure, totally. Uh. Now, 0:42:40.520 --> 0:42:43.560 of course, today canning and you know there's there are 0:42:43.560 --> 0:42:45.560 a lot of steps in between. But today canning has 0:42:45.600 --> 0:42:49.239 done at massive scale by automated machinery rather than the 0:42:49.280 --> 0:42:53.080 early method of like hand soldering the can together. Uh. 0:42:53.120 --> 0:42:56.160 And it's often I think I mentioned this earlier, superheated 0:42:56.200 --> 0:42:58.919 by the use of high pressure steam kettles to take 0:42:58.960 --> 0:43:02.200 the contents, actually has the normal pressure boiling point of 0:43:02.239 --> 0:43:05.160 water up to around two hundred and forty degrees fahrenheit 0:43:05.239 --> 0:43:08.120 or a hundred and sixty degrees celsius. So that's how 0:43:08.160 --> 0:43:09.839 you get a lot of these modern foods that are 0:43:09.880 --> 0:43:12.279 kind of canned to death. But then at the end 0:43:12.280 --> 0:43:14.800 of the day, like right, there's still it's still canned food. 0:43:14.840 --> 0:43:17.160 It is still food. That is, it is preserved, it 0:43:17.239 --> 0:43:19.920 is it is not corrupted, and you can eat it. It 0:43:19.840 --> 0:43:21.839 It might not be great, but maybe it's better than 0:43:22.680 --> 0:43:28.200 than than what Mangy assaulted pork from a barrel. Right now, 0:43:28.200 --> 0:43:31.200 and now to come back to home canning, this is interesting. 0:43:31.400 --> 0:43:32.920 Like I said, I grew up around canning, but I 0:43:32.960 --> 0:43:35.040 just had I just had this kind of mason jar 0:43:35.719 --> 0:43:39.600 world of canning in my head, and I kind of, uh, 0:43:39.760 --> 0:43:43.080 you know, just naively thought that this is what everybody did, 0:43:43.200 --> 0:43:45.239 like that everybody had the mason jar. The mason jar 0:43:45.320 --> 0:43:47.719 is the standard, and that's why we put flowers in 0:43:47.760 --> 0:43:51.839 them at at country weddings and why we we drink 0:43:51.840 --> 0:43:54.040 orange juice out of them in the morning. But uh, 0:43:54.320 --> 0:43:56.239 but no, you know, there were a number of inventions 0:43:56.239 --> 0:44:00.000 and innovations aimed at streamlining the home cannon game. Uh 0:44:00.080 --> 0:44:03.120 and uh and so yes, the mason jar was was, 0:44:02.960 --> 0:44:05.040 it was big, especially in the United States. But there 0:44:05.040 --> 0:44:08.200 were some other country specific innovations that were that are 0:44:08.200 --> 0:44:11.600 also worth mentioning, such as Germany's wet jar, which is 0:44:11.640 --> 0:44:15.399 created by the J Wet Company in eight and it's 0:44:15.400 --> 0:44:19.200 a molded glass jar with a simple lock sometimes described 0:44:19.239 --> 0:44:22.359 as like a fool proof lock, rubber gaskett and lid 0:44:22.920 --> 0:44:24.880 just to aid in the canning process. And it has 0:44:24.920 --> 0:44:27.600 a pretty slick looking kind of minimalist design to it. 0:44:28.239 --> 0:44:31.919 I think it's gorgeous. Yeah. She also mentioned, um, there's 0:44:31.960 --> 0:44:35.640 a Fowler's of a Cola, which was an Australian canning system. 0:44:36.160 --> 0:44:38.440 Perhaps some of our Australian listeners can chime in on 0:44:38.480 --> 0:44:40.399 that if they have memories of that U And then 0:44:40.440 --> 0:44:44.320 there's the Kilner jar, which was used in the in England, 0:44:44.840 --> 0:44:46.640 and I think this one had more of a screwing 0:44:46.680 --> 0:44:48.960 mechanism on top. So yeah, it basically comes down to 0:44:48.960 --> 0:44:51.719 the fact that, yes, there's the basic plan for out 0:44:51.719 --> 0:44:54.000 of can something, but especially and you know, if you're 0:44:54.000 --> 0:44:56.360 dealing with if you're either dealing with like a highly 0:44:56.520 --> 0:44:59.560 specific industrial process or you're dealing with a home process, 0:45:00.000 --> 0:45:02.120 you can have different approaches on how to best carry 0:45:02.160 --> 0:45:04.399 that off, how to how to form that seal, how 0:45:04.440 --> 0:45:08.320 to how to carry this all out safely because you know, 0:45:08.400 --> 0:45:11.160 ultimately you're dealing with boiling water and if you're in 0:45:11.400 --> 0:45:13.960 and if you're throwing a pressure cooker into the scenario, 0:45:14.120 --> 0:45:17.120 you know that also adds a certain element of danger 0:45:17.239 --> 0:45:20.400 to the scenario. And then, I mean, without getting to 0:45:20.440 --> 0:45:23.239 the fact that if you do it wrong, you're not 0:45:23.320 --> 0:45:26.560 going to properly preserve your food. You're going to potentially 0:45:26.560 --> 0:45:30.120 bottle um, you know, poison, which is not what you 0:45:30.200 --> 0:45:32.240 intended and not why you set off on this adventure 0:45:32.239 --> 0:45:34.399 of canning to begin with. At the very least, even 0:45:34.440 --> 0:45:37.120 if you don't poison yourself, you can end up wasting. Yeah, 0:45:37.280 --> 0:45:39.560 and and that is Yeah, that's the whole purpose of 0:45:39.600 --> 0:45:42.279 this endeavor is not to waste food, to to take 0:45:42.560 --> 0:45:45.120 what is food now and have it be food, uh 0:45:45.520 --> 0:45:48.600 three four months from now, a year from now, etcetera. 0:45:48.760 --> 0:45:50.719 You know, Robert, I think this has convinced me. I've 0:45:50.760 --> 0:45:53.000 never I do a lot of cooking at home, but 0:45:53.040 --> 0:45:54.839 I've never done canning at home. I think I'm gonna 0:45:54.880 --> 0:45:57.120 give it a try. Oh that's awesome. Yeah, I've never 0:45:57.239 --> 0:46:00.920 I've never attempted canning myself either, I don't think. Uh, 0:46:01.160 --> 0:46:03.279 most we've done in like fridge pickles, which is, you know, 0:46:03.360 --> 0:46:07.520 not cannings. Yeah. Yeah, but that's the closest I've come, 0:46:07.520 --> 0:46:10.879 because it's at least in a mason jar. Uh. So yeah, 0:46:10.880 --> 0:46:13.080 I would. I would also love to hear from anyone 0:46:13.120 --> 0:46:16.600 who currently engages in canning. What's your what's it like? 0:46:16.840 --> 0:46:19.840 How do you how do you relate to the canning process? Uh? Likewise, 0:46:19.880 --> 0:46:22.920 did you grow up you know, within any of these 0:46:23.000 --> 0:46:26.680 various canning traditions, uh, any of these various models of 0:46:26.680 --> 0:46:30.520 of of home canning, or do you have specific memories 0:46:30.560 --> 0:46:34.600 of good or bad about various canned foods? We'd love 0:46:34.640 --> 0:46:36.440 to hear from you, and likewise, uh, you know, if 0:46:36.480 --> 0:46:37.799 we'd love to hear from you, if you would like 0:46:38.040 --> 0:46:42.600 to to hear the exploration here, continue in any in 0:46:42.640 --> 0:46:45.640 any direction that we've touched on in this episode, because 0:46:45.640 --> 0:46:48.800 certainly the history of food technology is is vast, and 0:46:48.840 --> 0:46:52.360 there's so many wonderful little avenues to to follow or 0:46:52.400 --> 0:46:57.320 to go in more depth upon. Next episode, Let's do Jello. No, 0:46:57.560 --> 0:47:00.680 we don't have um, you know, but it's a but No. Specifically, 0:47:00.760 --> 0:47:02.279 we could do a whole episode in Joel. We could 0:47:02.280 --> 0:47:05.920 do a whole episode on just can sardines themselves? You know, 0:47:06.040 --> 0:47:09.120 like any one of these these examples, you know, are 0:47:09.440 --> 0:47:11.759 are generally there's a lot more history and a lot 0:47:11.800 --> 0:47:14.399 more science to it than we tend to think. All right, 0:47:14.560 --> 0:47:18.120 So again, stick with us throughout November. We're gonna have 0:47:18.160 --> 0:47:20.759 some more food related episodes of Invention coming at you, 0:47:20.840 --> 0:47:24.240 and who I don't I can't even imagine what December 0:47:24.280 --> 0:47:26.840 is going to bring, but you can follow us and 0:47:26.880 --> 0:47:29.480 find out. Make sure you have wherever you get your podcasts, 0:47:29.719 --> 0:47:32.680 go to Invention. 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