I was buying cans of beans and diced tomatoes to make chili (a winter staple in my house) when I paused and really looked at the can. We take canned food so much for granted I doubt we ever really think about how wonderful it is. Oh, I know canned spinach is limp and I don’t care for canned green beans BUT before the 1800s there was no such thing as canned food or refrigeration either for that matter.

Food has to be preserved to last over the winter – unless you follow the birds south or plan to starve. Methods for preserving food prior to canned food and refrigeration amounted to pickling, think sauerkraut, drying, salting or smoking. Sugar can also be used but sugar was very expensive then.

People knew keeping the air away from food kept it from spoiling but not why.  Louis Pasteur would not be born for another almost twenty-five years so no one even guessed there were microscopic microbes everywhere. So when was this modern marvel invented?

Well, in 1795 Napoleon Bonaparte offered a reward for anyone who find a reliable method for preserving food for troops on the move. (I imagine he was already dreaming of military glory and world domination). It took fifteen years but one Nicholas Appert figured out a way to seal food in glass jars. Ten years later an Englishman named Peter Durand invented a method using unbreakable tin cans. At first these tinned foods were luxury items for the wealthy but by the end of the nineteenth century they were available for everyone.

Ironically, just as the invention of canned foods was inspired by Napoleon and his wars, the explosion in the consumption of them was spurred by the United States Civil War.