The praise from seamen for this unexpected addition to their daily menu was warm and glowing, from every corner of the globe. William Warner, surgeon of the ship Ville de Paris, wrote in that canned food "forms a most excellent restorative to convalescents, and would often, on long voyages, save the lives of many men who run into consumption [tuberculosis] at sea for want of nourishment after acute diseases; my opinion, therefore, is that its adoption generally at sea would be a most desirable and laudable act".
In Chile, there is a cove named Caleta Donkin, so called because the crew led by Capt Fitzroy were so delighted with their canned food. Donkin and Gamble even had a system of quality assurance - each can spent one month of incubation at C heat before going out. And each was numbered to help track its origins. Perhaps the most gratifying seal of approval came from Sir Joseph Banks, on behalf of the Royal Society, who opened a can of veal two-and-a-half years old and declared it to be in "a perfect state of preservation".
Banks went on to describe Donkin's work as "one of the most important discoveries of the age we live in". On the back of such praise, business with the Admiralty took off.
In , the order was for 2,lb and in it was 9,lb. Then other players came on to the market, clearly infringing the year patent. He expanded his client base by wooing polar explorers like Parry. For them, canned food was hugely beneficial because the perils of getting stuck in the ice all winter meant they had to haul two or three years of food on voyages. The upmarket London retailer was quick off the mark to start a canning business on its Piccadilly premises, offering wealthy Britons - the Empire builders - a "taste of home".
Donkin's interest in canning ended in when he dissolved his partnership with Hall and Gamble. It isn't clear why, but the impression from his diaries is that canning was more of an engineering challenge than a passion.
Some of his personal letters reveal a man finding the commercial climate to be tough, as a debt-ridden nation adjusted to peace after years of fighting. To his brother in , he says: "What do you think will be the end of these portentous times?
From the information I obtained during my recent peregrinations; universal distress seems to pervade the whole community of this country and the manufacturing part in particular. These anxieties did not blunt his enthusiasm.
Donkin continued his papermaking machine business and later assisted Sir Marc Brunel in tunnelling under the River Thames. Noting he had been a magistrate in Surrey in his later years, his obituary from the Royal Society said: "His life was one uninterrupted course of usefulness and good purpose. After his death in , he was buried in a family plot in Nunhead Cemetery, south London. It's an indication of how much history has overlooked his achievements that on a recent visit, cemetery staff were unaware who he was.
His resting place is overshadowed by the imposing sarcophagus next to him for the shipbuilder John Allan. And even on his own grave, his name appears rather as a footnote, below three other relatives named Bryan Donkin and their spouses.
There is no mention of his achievements. Donkin was a fascinating man and a brilliant engineer who has been recognised in his sphere, says John Nutting, editorial director of The Can Maker magazine. But he's been forgotten by the wider world. He wasn't a guy like Brunel who was involved in ships and trains and all those big infrastructure projects.
Donkin's engineering company remained in Bermondsey until , when it moved to Chesterfield. His successor at the helm of the world's first tin canning business, John Gamble, moved the factory to Cork in Ireland in , where there was a larger supply of cattle and the shipping route to the US offered an endless supply of custom. When Gamble exhibited an array of canned foods at the Great Exhibition in , to widespread approval, it must have seemed like the tin can's switch from military necessity to household must-have was only a matter of time.
But then came a food scandal that threatened to strike the fledgling industry with a fatal blow. In January , a group of meat inspectors gathered at the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard in Portsmouth and proceeded to open cans of meat destined for the Navy.
It was not until they opened the 19th can that they found one fit for human consumption. Instead of perfectly preserved beef, they found putrid meat so rotten that the stone floors needed to be coated with chloride of lime to mask the stench, according to an account in the Illustrated London News.
Sometimes the smell was so overpowering the inspectors had to stop and leave the room for fresh air before resuming their grim task.
They fished out pieces of heart, rotting tongues from a dog or sheep, offal, blood, a whole kidney "perfectly putrid", ligaments and tendons and a mass of pulp. Some organs appeared to be from diseased animals. They condemned cans that day, throwing them into the sea. The remaining 42 cans were given to the poor. This scene was repeated across the country, as part of a nationwide inspection ordered by the Admiralty.
They found meat at Navy depots to be "garbage and putridity in a horrible state". A letter to the Times in revealed that officers of The Plover threw 1,lb of canned meat overboard in the Bering Straits because "we found it in a pulpy, decayed and putrid state, and totally unfit for men's food". The supplier in question was Stephan Goldner, who had won the Admiralty contract in by undercutting all rivals, thanks to cheap labour working at his meat factory in what is now Romania.
That contract grew significantly in when the Admiralty introduced preserved meat as a general ration one day a week. The following year complaints began to trickle in from victualling yards in the UK and from British seamen around the world that other parts of animals were being found in canned meat. Despite this, Goldner was awarded another contract in , with a warning that his meat needed to be genuine. In order to meet the demand, he asked if he could increase the size of the cans, but he didn't cook the meat sufficiently.
A government select committee was appointed to investigate and questions were asked in the Commons. There was a danger that this bad publicity might put people off canned food for good, a threat that still lingered 10 years later. Writing in Victorian London in , the doctor and writer Andrew Wynter said: "It does seem suicidal folly on the part of the public to conceive a prejudice against a discovery which is of great public importance in a hygienic point of view, and which has been attested and proved.
Goldner was banned from ever supplying the Navy again. It was also revealed that he had supplied the meat to Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition that perished in the Arctic in mysterious circumstances in Lady Franklin launched five ships in search of her husband, leaving Fortnum cans on the ice in the desperate hope that he would find them.
In total more than 50 expeditions joined the search. Bodies eventually recovered were found to have a high lead content and to this day, many people believe the crew members were poisoned by leaking lead in their poorly soldered tin cans. More recent research suggests the canned food supplied to Franklin was not acidic enough for that to happen and the lead was more likely to have come from the internal pipe system on the ships.
Now many also believed that it caused food poisoning. Housewives wanted recognisable cuts of meat, she says, not flavourless, overcooked blocks of meat. Writer Anthony Trollope bought Australian canned meat for his servants and described it as "utterly tasteless".
A campaign got under way to promote the nutritional benefits of canned food, with advertisements appearing in the popular press and positive reviews from the Great Exhibition in London's Hyde Park. These messages struck a chord at a time when the growing urban populations in Europe and the US were finding a voice through trade unions and co-operative societies, and demanding better food.
And the first canned food to penetrate the family budget came just in time to salvage the tin can's reputation. Canning is still an excellent way to capture the taste of a season — from peaches and tomatoes in summer to apples in the fall. Acidulations, or acids, are a key component in canned produce. Sources for including acid includes vinegar, lemon juice, citric acid or even ground Aspirin.
To add a touch of brightness to your mason jar, there are color enhancers and colorants. This includes citric acid for preserving the color of just-cut fruit, ascorbic acid to prevent browning and sulfites to both prevent spoilage and the changing of colors.
Finally, when canning items with a high proportion of liquid, there are texture enhancers and thickening agents, such as food-grade calcium chloride or a variety of starches to thicken. Pickling lime can improve your pickles and pectin will yield better-canned fruits.
From Appert to the Ball Brothers: a history of canning. The Great Seal The process of preserving food in a hermetically-sealed jar or tin was the answer to a problem proposed by the French and English governments as their armies subsided on salted meat and hardtack — the need for more nutritious and non-perishable food was great.
The Home Front Home canning was slower to take off than tin. February 12, Arctic explorers, for example, needed to carry two or three years' worth of provisions in the event they got stuck in the ice. Other companies got into the canning business, too, even before the year patent expired.
However, a food scandal in the early s nearly killed this young canning industry. In , inspectors found depots of spoiled meat destined for the Navy, as well as across the country. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of meat supplied by Stephan Goldner were thrown out due to it not being fit for human consumption. The bad publicity put people in Europe, Britain, Australia, and America off canned food for a decade. Eventually, campaigns to promote the nutritional benefits of canned food struck a chord with the growing urban populations.
In the s, mass-produced condensed milk infiltrated shops and homes. As farms disappeared in urban areas, more people began drinking canned milk, rather than fresh.
They sold canned oysters, fruits, meats, and vegetables. By the s, can making was mechanized. In , the process of double seaming " made it possible for high-speed equipment to make, fill, and close the cans.
Bovril and Heinz were two companies that made further technological developments and better canning processes. The first can opener, however, wasn't invented until the s and didn't actually become a household staple until with the addition of the serrated wheel. Prior to this, cans were cut open with knives. America especially saw great success with canned provisions.
Under President Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal Programs, needy people in 30 states received million pounds of food, much of it being canned beef.
Tin cans also allowed people to taste new food for the first time, including imported corned beef and things like peaches and tropical fruits. Tin cans also played a large role in the shift from agriculture to the Industrial Revolution.
Canning allowed foods to be harvested at peak times and eaten during any season. Naturally, the two World Wars also had an impact on food production and, in turn, were affected by the tin can. One canned product that especially experienced a revolution during and after the war was Spam. While it was already a fairly successful product found in households across the states pre-war, World War II really gave it global recognition. Some soldiers received genuine Spam as part of their K-rations, while most received government meat canned by Hormel and others.
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