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A History of Food Preservation
A plain-language overview of how people kept food from spoiling, from drying, salting and smoking to pickling, canning, refrigeration and freezing.
Home and Everyday Life
Food Preservation and Cooking
How people kept food from spoiling and how cooking tools evolved.
Baking Powder, Yeast and Leavening
How bakers made dough rise, from sourdough and brewers' yeast to pearlash, baking soda, baking powder and packaged yeast, and what it meant for home baking.
Canning and Appert Glass Jars
How Nicolas Appert's heated glass bottles led to tin cans and home jars, and why nobody could explain canning until the work of Pasteur and later food scientists.
Cast Iron Stoves and the Kitchen Range
How cooking moved from open hearths to enclosed cast iron stoves and ranges in the 1700s and 1800s, and how coal, gas and electricity reshaped the kitchen.
Freeze Drying and Instant Foods
A history of freeze drying, from laboratory work on tissues and serum to wartime blood plasma, instant coffee, space food and lightweight meals for expeditions.
Frozen Food and Quick Freezing
How quick freezing grew from Arctic observations and early cold-storage experiments into the supermarket freezer aisle and the home freezer of the 20th century.
Ice Houses and the Natural Ice Trade
How ice was cut from lakes and rivers, stored in insulated ice houses and shipped worldwide in the 1800s, until machines made natural ice unnecessary.
Pasteurization and Safer Milk
The history of pasteurization, from Louis Pasteur's work on wine and beer to heat-treated milk, early public health campaigns and municipal milk laws.
Salting, Smoking and Drying Food
How salt curing, smoking and drying kept meat, fish and grain through winters and long voyages before modern equipment, and why the methods still survive.
The Can Opener Arrives Decades After the Can
Why tin cans existed for decades before dedicated can openers, how early cans were opened with chisels, and how wheel, key and pull-tab designs followed.
The Pressure Cooker and Steam Cooking
From Denis Papin's 1679 steam digester to household pressure cookers, how sealed vessels raise the boiling point and cook food faster, with safety lessons.
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