During the French Revolutionary Wars of the late 1700s, there was no reliable way to package food that soldiers could eat while fighting on far-flung battlefields. There were ways to dry, smoke, ferment, pickle, and soak food in brine, but none of those methods preserved the taste of food, and none were entirely reliable.
When the French government offered a 12,000-franc prize to anyone who could solve the problem, chef and distiller Nicolas Appert accepted the challenge. After 14 years of experimentation, Appert devised a way to preserve soups, fruits, jams and stews, using tightly sealed glass bottles immersed in boiling water for about five hours. Interestingly, Appert never knew why the process worked, but it did, as long as the jars were devoid of air and were sealed properly.
The father of canning:
- Appert used the prize money to start a large-scale food preservation factory. He began to experiment with meat packed in tin cans (instead of tall glass bottles), which he soldered shut and then watched for signs of swelling.
- In England, Peter Durand was on a similar food preservation quest, and in 1810 he applied for a patent to use iron cans with a thin plating of tin to preserve and package food. By 1813, the Royal Navy had a steady source of canned meat.
- More than 50 years after Appert's prize-winning process was patented, Louis Pasteur improved upon it by developing pasteurization.