Nicolas Appert
The Father of modern day canning, Appert was a professional chef and confectioner. He became obsessed with ways of preserving different foods. 18th century Paris gave way to preserved foods that lacked taste and the unpleasantness of food with no aroma, bad juices, the stiffness of food fibers making them inedible. Salt, gave foods a sourness making them too tough and unable to digest. Appert spend ten years experimenting with different sized champagne bottles that he filled with fruits, vegetables, and meats and placed them in a bath of hot water. Appert stated that the function of nutrition, for it to be preserved, it must be subjected to heat, until all air is ridden from the bottle. He wrote the details of his process consisted principally of:
1st. In enclosing in bottles the substances to be preserved.
2d, In corking the bottles with the utmost care; for it is chiefly on the cooking that the success of the process depends.
3d. In submitting these inclosed substances to the action of boiling water in a water-bath (Balneum Mariae), for a greater or less length of time, according to their nature, and in the manner pointed out with respect to each several kind of substance.
4th, In withdrawing the bottles from the water-bath at the period described.24
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