The Father of Canned Food

Ugh, what smells? Is it the bag of sliced turkey somebody forgot to put back in the refrigerator? Yep, that’s it. The meat has spoiled. It stinks, and it will make you really sick if you eat it. Better throw it out! Keeping food safe to eat is why we have refrigerators, but most homes didn’t have them until the 1940s.

Through much of history, foods were dried, salted, or put in vinegar to preserve them. Those methods could ruin the foods’ taste. Worse, they didn’t always work. Food still went bad, and people still got sick from eating it. In 1790, a French chef named Nicolas Appert set out to invent a better way to store food.

Can you imagine working on a science experiment for nearly fifteen years? That’s what Appert did. At that time, nobody knew exactly why food went bad. The bacteria that make food rot hadn’t been discovered yet. But Appert had a hunch that heat might help, so he ran test after test. He experimented with soups, fruits, jellies, and other foods. All that hard work finally paid off. Appert discovered a way that worked to store food safely.

First, he put the food in a glass bottle. Then he closed the bottle with a cork. He crossed two wires over the top to hold the cork tight. Finally, he put the bottle in boiling water. After experimenting on his own, he decided to test his new bottled food in the real world. In 1803, Appert gave some preserved food to sailors who were leaving on a three-month-long trip. When they came back, the sailors reported that none of the food had gone bad. Even better, his bottled peas were as fresh and tasty as if they’d just been picked.

Appert’s method worked! Now he needed to spread the word. He entered his bottled fruits and vegetables in a food fair, but he didn’t win a prize. He wrote to a group of famous scientists and asked them to taste his bottled food. Like the sailors, the scientists found many of the foods tasted as good as fresh. Then Appert asked the French government to help fund his bottling business. They said they would — if Appert shared his method with everyone.

Appert agreed, and he wrote a book in 1810. Thousands of copies were printed. The book was also sold in Germany and England. Nicolas Appert’s new product was a hit. Vegetables and fruits picked in the summer could be stored for the winter. Travelers would be able to take the bottles on long trips. Appert’s discovery changed the way food was stored.

In 1814, Appert visited London and found a new kind of container that worked to keep food safe. An inventor there had made an iron can and coated it with tin to keep it from rusting. The new “tin can” could keep food as fresh as Appert’s bottles and didn’t break as easily as glass. Appert switched from glass bottles to tin cans. Others did the same. Soon factories around the world were producing cans of fruits, vegetables, meats, and other foods. (Can openers actually weren’t invented until forty-five years after cans. Until then, people had to open cans with a hammer and chisel.)

Today, we understand that the heat during the canning process kills the bacteria that make food go bad. Sealing the can then keeps more bacteria from getting in. Our food producers also have many other methods to store food safely, such as refrigeration, freezing, and freeze-drying. But we still keep canned food on the shelf. It’s all thanks to Nicolas Appert’s years of experiments.