CANNED GOODS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 29 January 1927, Page 11

CANNED GOODS

TT was Napoleon Bonaparte who, wanting fresh meats and vegetables for his soldiers, first offered _ a prize equal to about £SOO for a written description of how to preserve food in a way to taste fresh. The prize offered set the chef confectioner,. Francois Apfpfert';'to work, and in 1804, after nine years of experimenting, he succeeded and his description of his process won the prize. He used widemouthed bottles, corked and sealed, and it was not until several years later that Peter Durand, an Englishman, first used a. tin can, or “canister” as he called it. The first preserving done in America was done by two Englishmen who hail learned the process in England (says the Christian Science Monitor). They were William 'Underwood and Charles Mitchell, and they used glass containers for their, vegetable and fish canning. It was in .1825

THEIR ORIGIN AND HISTORY

that Thomas Kensett took out the first patent for a tin can, but it was little like what we have to-day. The old cans were cut by hand from a sheet of metal, and a rapid workman could make GO a day. To-dav, with modern machinery, a man can turn out 1500 cans, and these ‘far better than Hit 4 old hand-cut ones. Tn the old sailing vessel days the ships carried cows to supply milk for any babies on board. Often the cows would go dry because they were not used to the food the}' got’. Gail Borden had little money, but he persuaded the Shakers, a religious group at New Lebanon, in New York, to help him, and he experimented in. boiling the water out. of milk until he had it condensed, so that a quantity could go into a small can. For many years Borden worked to perfect his idea, bearing ridicule and poverty, but in the end he succeeded and won fame and fortune. Then came the Civil War, and the United States Government became a customer for canned foods to feed its armies marching through parts of the country where all foods were gone. Thousands of men who had never before eaten canned food went home to spread the news of this new wav of keeping foods, and the growth of the canning industry in America really dated from the Civil War. There have been romances in the canning industry, too. In a small Pennsylvanian town a young man. looking for a way to earn money, began putting up horse-radish that he found growing behind a deserted house. Then he added beans and other vegetables to liis list, until the name of Heinz is known throughout the eonntrv In Prance to-day the descendants of Francois Appert are still in the canning business, and put. up delicacies such as breast of capon and truffles that are fit for a royal feast. We take our canned food as a matter of course, yet each year Alaska packs twice as much'salmon as ‘ would pay the £l,500.000 which the United States gave Russia for that territory in 18GS.